


Sepulchral

by Helholden



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arguing, Bonding, Caretaking, Comfort, Exhaustion, F/M, Sharing a Bed, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Helholden/pseuds/Helholden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke exhausts herself too much, and Bellamy tries to take care of her in his own way. In which there is comfort in human touch and relief in being able to admit when you’re feeling weak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_* * *_

 

Clarke was going to faint. She could feel the dizziness creeping up into her brain, and the world seemed to sway. It was her own legs giving out beneath her, but to her, it was the world that was all wrong. A moving, living thing. She stumbled, and then it felt like she was floating softly downward through a sea of clouds. She wondered if this was how falling through the sky outside of a spaceship felt like. She had never flown through the sky before.

 

Before she hit anything hard, her vision and consciousness temporarily blacked out. The world was gone for a matter of seconds, peaceful and deep like the comfort of sleep. When she came to, Clarke’s eyes fluttered open slowly. She could see the treetops above her. Shafts of sunlight shot through the golden green leaves, landing on her face to warm it.

 

She was being carried in a pair of arms.

 

Clarke glanced over at her rescuer. To her surprise, it was Bellamy carrying her. Not Finn. She stared at him blankly at first, her lips parted in shock. When she blinked her eyes, she closed her mouth. She was so exhausted. She shut her eyes again, unable to argue with reality, and let her head fall against Bellamy’s chest.

 

“Did you catch me before I fell?” Clarke managed to ask.

 

“Maybe,” Bellamy replied. “Or maybe you hit your head and now you’re dreaming.”

 

“I’m not dreaming,” Clarke protested.

 

“Oh yeah?” Bellamy said. “How come?”

 

“Because you stink,” Clarke answered softly. She was so, so tired. Despite her comment on his smell, she breathed in deeply, her fingers curling unconsciously against the material of his shirt. “You don’t smell anything in dreams.”

 

“Astute as always, Clarke,” Bellamy joked, but he didn’t sound angry about it.

 

“Where are you taking me?” Clarke asked him.

 

“Somewhere where you can lie down,” he told her, and not a moment later, Clarke felt the flap of a tent slide against her legs. Suddenly, the sun was gone and so was the heat. It was cool and comfortable and dark. Clarke was laid upon a thick blanket and a makeshift pillow. It was soft. A lot softer than her own. Her head rolled to the side, but she couldn’t bring herself to open her eyes again. The pillow was cool, and when she laid her cheek against it, she sighed comfortably.

 

She heard a rustle, and the tent flap flew open to let in a stream of sunlight.

 

“Is she okay?” Monty asked quickly, his voice full of concern. “Is she sick? What’s wrong with her?”

 

“Yeah, is she going to be alright?” Jasper asked next, equally as worried as Monty.

 

“She’ll be fine,” Bellamy said firmly. “She’s just tired is all. She needs some rest to recover her strength.”

 

“She hasn’t been sleeping much lately,” Monty offered. “She said so last night while I was working on the comm system.”

 

“I saw her giving her rations away to the kids in the group, too,” Jasper added knowingly.

 

“I’m right here,” Clarke mumbled out loud, but she couldn’t bother to turn over and face them.

 

“Guys, clear out of here,” Bellamy argued with them. “Let her get some sleep. C’mon, get out of here.”

 

Clarke heard Bellamy shooing them away, and then he spoke from the flap of the tent.

 

“Get some rest, Clarke,” he said softly. “You’ll need it.”

 

Clarke heard the tent flap fall as a brief ray of light filled the tent, and then it was gone. Slowly, she turned over onto her side and opened her eyes to gaze where Bellamy had been standing just moments ago, but he was already gone.

 

Sighing, Clarke closed her eyes and tried to do what he said. Get some sleep. She curled into a ball on her side, sliding her hand under the pillow and hugging it close as she lay on it. She didn’t need a blanket to cover her. It was cool, but not chilly. Before long, she slipped into a deep sleep. She was resting on her side, and then there was blackness. When her eyes opened up again, she was in outer space, surrounded by blackness on all sides. When she looked forward, though, the Earth loomed before her, a large and terrifying thing pulling her closer and closer with its pull of gravity. She could see the green lands, the sandy deserts, the white ice caps, and the deep blue oceans. All of them, charging towards her.

 

The pull became so strong that it was like she was falling. Falling, falling through space towards the Earth. Her hair whipped behind her, and fires sparked up around her as she accelerated through the atmosphere. Surprisingly, despite her fear of burning, she didn’t feel the fire. It was like it wasn’t there, but it was. Eventually, the sheer force against her splayed her arms out to either side of her body. Falling, falling through space, burning like a star.

 

Just as the Earth became closer and Clarke was going to scream, her eyes shot open to the darkness before her. There was a blue wash of color to the black. Like moonlight. Moonlight she had never seen until her time on Earth. Clarke realized she was pressed against someone’s back, her arm curled over his arm, her hand gripping his shoulder too tight with her nails digging in. His messy black hair was the first thing in her line of sight. He smelled clean. Nice. _Like soap_ , Clarke thought. She loosened the tight grip of her fingers on his shoulder, but she didn’t let go of him.

 

She recalled Bellamy bringing her back to her tent, and then she realized with a sudden shock who it might be lying down with her. With her hand still on his shoulder, she lifted her head to look over his back at the side of his face, but she didn’t have to. At the same time that she lifted herself to look at him, he slowly turned his head to look at her, too.

 

 _Bellamy_ , Clarke thought with a bolt of shock again.

 

It wasn’t Finn this time either.

 

It was Bellamy.

 

“Hey,” he said, and she realized by the drowsy tone of his voice that he had been asleep, too. “Wait,” Bellamy added, suddenly sounding confused. “I fell asleep five feet away from you.”

 

Clarke looked over her shoulder behind her. She was on the edge of the makeshift bed, touching a fine line of waterproof tent material between the blanket of the main bed and another one that Bellamy had thrown down beside it for his own place to sleep apart from her. She blinked in surprise and turned back to him.

 

“Sorry,” she said, “I must’ve moved in my sleep.”

 

Despite her apology, she didn’t move away from him. Her body was still pressed against his back, and it felt comfortable. It felt nice. Clarke didn’t want to pull away and lie down alone again. She swallowed past a lump forming in her throat. She was afraid Bellamy might get the wrong idea, but he just lied there, looking up at her through his dark locks.

 

“You okay?” he finally asked, breaking the odd tension that had formed between them.

 

Clarke was silent at first. “No,” she said in a quiet voice, finding her honesty yet another surprise. She was tired of being tough. She was always tough, and he wasn’t judging her. “I had a bad dream.”

 

“About what?”

 

“Falling through space,” she said, recalling the way it felt. The air roaring around her, but there wasn’t air in outer space. It was just the pull of gravity as she broke through the atmosphere. “And burning. I was burning, but I couldn’t feel it. It was the falling that scared me.”

 

Bellamy breathed in deeply, and he shifted onto his back. Clarke had to pull back some, but she didn’t pull away completely. She kept her hand on his shoulder. Bellamy noticed, and he glanced down at her fingers. His eyes looked up at her face again.

 

“I’ve had that dream before,” he revealed, lowering his voice, too. “It’s scary, I know.”

 

Clarke never thought in all her time here that she would have ever heard Bellamy admit he was scared of something. She had seen it in his face before, but he had never said it out loud. He had never given it that power, that validation. She realized her mouth was open, and she realized that Bellamy was staring at her.

 

“Look at us,” Clarke said, huffing in disbelief.

 

“Hmm,” Bellamy inquired wordlessly, tilting his head to the side as he looked up at her.

 

“Admitting our fears,” she said softly. “To each other.”

 

“ _Hmph_ ,” Bellamy said, a small smile curving the corner of his lips. “Yeah, who would’ve thought, huh?”

 

His smile caused her to smile, too, but she grinned instead. It felt nice. Her hand flattened against his shoulder, and then it slid a few inches lower. His skin was warm. She could feel it through his shirt. Clarke thought about lifting her hand away from him, but she couldn’t pull it away. It was too comforting, human touch. She didn’t want to pull away, she realized.

 

Her eyes had fallen to his chest. Bellamy was wearing a clean shirt. Clarke recognized the scent of soap again as she breathed in, and she remembered her comment to him earlier. _You stink_ , she had said. He didn’t stink now.

 

Had he washed? Clarke thought. Had he washed for _her_?

 

The thought was so alien, foreign to her, that she felt herself yet again experiencing the brusque feeling of astonishment as it filled her up to the brim. Her lips were parted again, her eyes shining with it as she stared down at his shirt. Her fingers were moving over his chest, lowering themselves along the curve beneath his shoulder. Bellamy’s chest rose and fell a little quicker than normal, a little more pronounced than before. Her fingers followed an indented path across his chest until they reached the dip in the center. She traced her fingers lightly, watching them pass over his shirt.

 

“Clarke . . . ” Bellamy said below his breath, his voice laced with a slight strain.

 

She paused the movements of her hand and looked up at his face. Bellamy was staring up at her, a pained expression on his face.

 

“Yes?” she whispered, gently tapping two of her fingers against him.

 

“Is there a reason you’re touching me?” Bellamy asked in a murmur. His eyes were dark, but they seemed to glint as they caught the moonlight.

 

Clarke opened her mouth to say something, but found no words immediately. She didn’t know what to say now that it was acknowledged out loud. There was a strange pull to him, a magnetism she couldn’t explain. The air was electric with it. She felt if she touched him with her other hand that she would shock him. Clarke breathed out, allowing herself another moment of honesty with her guard down.

 

“It feels nice,” she answered softly.

 

She watched his expression. He was still. Afraid of discomfort, Clarke thought maybe now she should pull away. Bellamy surely didn’t want her touching him. He didn’t think of her that way, and she had never really thought of him that way either.

 

She went to pull her hand away, and Bellamy stopped her by laying his hand atop her own on his chest. Clarke froze, breathing in slowly. Her eyes lifted to his face, and he was still looking at her. She felt his fingers gently curl underneath her palm and his thumb grace over her fingers. The motion was so soft, so unlike him, and it sent a slight tingle through her hand. She felt it in her back, behind her neck, even though he hadn’t touched her there. The little hairs on her skin stood on end as he stared up at her in the darkness, and for that moment, Clarke didn’t want to pull away.

 

“It does,” Bellamy answered just as softly, and Clarke felt the four walls she had built around herself begin to crumble at the gentleness in his voice.

 

“Can I just stay here tonight?” Clarke asked him suddenly, feeling more vulnerable than ever with the request. “Can I just . . . lie here . . . with you? Or would that be weird?”

 

“No, you can stay,” he told her, shaking his head. “It doesn’t bother me.”

 

“You don’t think I want to sleep with you, do you?” Clarke asked, feeling a little unsure about it.

 

Bellamy huffed in amusement. “Not unless you say you want to sleep with me, princess,” he joked, and at the sudden shift in her expression, his own softened up again. “Clarke,” he added seriously.

 

Clarke felt the tightness in her lips loosen. “Okay,” she said. She went to lay her head down against his chest, but she paused halfway there and looked at him again. “You don’t mind if I lay my head against your chest, do you?”

 

Bellamy’s dark eyes were looking down his chest, regarding her in the moonlight. He shook his head again. “No,” he said in a low voice. “I don’t mind.”

 

Taking a deep breath, Clarke finally rested the side of her face against his chest. She scooted closer to him to make it comfortable. She was partially draped over his body, but he didn’t seem to mind. Bellamy still held her hand, pulling it closer towards his collarbone to get both of their hands out of her way.

 

His thumb grazed her knuckles, and Clarke gently twisted her hand in his grasp to flatten it against his palm. She laced her fingers with his and curled them to a close. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she took a deep calming breath.

 

Bellamy curled his fingers over her hand as well, and like that, they fell asleep together in Bellamy’s tent.

 

For the rest of the night, Clarke didn’t have anymore nightmares.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You are mine, and I am yours. Let’s not fuck around.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Notes:** So, I've written a part two! Enjoy! ❤

_* * *_

 

Clarke found herself drawn to Bellamy’s tent again as night descended on the camp. The memory of his hand holding hers and the comfort of being pressed against his back in his makeshift bed followed her everywhere she went during the day. When she lay down at night, she thought of it then, too. Bellamy had offered her something simple and yet so hard to attain. Human contact and human comfort with no expectations.

 

Pushing a wet branch out of her way, Clarke felt the water droplets sprinkle onto her hair. She made her way to his tent and snuck inside soundlessly. He was alone and asleep. Clarke was too wary of approaching him while he was awake. She would have to explain herself. She lifted up the covers and crawled into the bed beside him, but Bellamy was a light sleeper. Her presence woke him up immediately. Clarke froze, still sitting up and holding the blanket in midair.

 

Bellamy turned over in the dark to look for her, catching her in his line of sight. Either he was squinting to adjusting his eyes to the darkness or he wasn’t too happy to see her in his tent a second time, but that wasn’t fair. He had brought her here the first time, after all. It wasn’t as if it had been her choice.

 

“ . . . Clarke?” he asked, and he pushed himself up on his elbows. “What are you doing here?” He glanced down at her hand, holding up the blanket. “In my bed, no less.”

 

Clarke opened her mouth, but found herself at a loss for words. It took her a moment for her mouth to catch up with her brain. “I . . . I thought you wouldn’t mind,” she said, searching desperately for a way to explain it that didn’t make her sound weird. “I didn’t have anymore nightmares last time. I hoped . . . ”

 

Bellamy must have sensed her discomfort. “Okay,” he simply said, and he moved to lie back down again.

 

Clarke stared at him, confusion written all over her face. She tilted her head to the side. “You don’t mind?” she asked. “If I stay?”

 

Bellamy pursed his lips like he didn’t care, shaking his head. “Nah, I don’t mind,” he told her, a little louder than normal. “Go ahead, make yourself comfortable. Just don’t kick me in the back, and we’re good.”

 

Clarke swallowed past a building lump in her throat. He made her so nervous sometimes. She didn’t know how to read him, but she settled down beside him under the covers and scooted close to his back. She could feel the heat radiating off of him. Hesitantly, she reached her arm over his middle. When he didn’t jump, she laid it against his body, her hand flat against his abdomen. She rested her chin against his upper back, pressing her nose into his shirt.

 

He smelled clean again. Clarke breathed in his scent, and fell asleep that way behind him. When she had already fallen asleep, she had never felt it, but Bellamy’s hand covered hers, the one that lay against his abdomen.

 

When she woke in the morning, they had rolled over under the blanket. Clarke’s back was to him, and Bellamy was wrapped around her instead. His face was pressed close to her hair, and she felt his breath low on her neck. His arm was over her waist, his hand lying upon her stomach. Clarke didn’t want to get up immediately. She had had no more bad dreams again, and his presence beside her was comfortable.

 

Eventually, she got out of bed, and they acted like it had never even happened.

 

Clarke kept going to his tent at night. It became a bit of a ritual. She waited until everyone was asleep, and then she crept through the camp to Bellamy’s tent by the dropship. Sometimes he was already asleep, and she always woke him up if he was, but sometimes he was still awake, and he welcomed her without words spoken. They talked sometimes, but sometimes it was too late and they were ready to fall asleep.

 

He was easy to talk to at night with no one else around. It wasn’t the same when they were surrounded by the group. At night, he let go of the act and she let down her guard.

 

“Do you think we’re going to survive down here?” Clarke asked him one night.

 

Bellamy was silent at first. He was lying behind her, his arm draped over her side. She could feel him shift his head on the pillow, leaning closer to her hair. “Yeah, I think we can,” he said. Bellamy said it with such surety she believed it herself, even if she had her doubts.

 

“But the Grounders . . . ” she began.

 

“We can fight them,” Bellamy interrupted.

 

“Our food supply—”

 

“We’ll find more,” he told her.

 

“We’re dying off,” Clarke added softly, and Bellamy started to say something.

 

“We’ll—” he stopped, though, whatever he meant to say. His fist balled up against her stomach, and then he released it. He might have been afraid it would give him away.

 

Clarke turned over in his arms onto her back. “What were you going to say?” she asked, so scientifically, so very her. She turned further until she was lying on her side. For comfort, she placed her arm over his. She laid her hand against his back.

 

Bellamy swallowed in the dark. “Nothing,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “There’s nothing we could do about that, except fight them.”

 

“We can still die,” Clarke said, “fighting them.”

 

“We could,” he agreed.

 

“But you weren’t going to say that,” Clarke elaborated, shifting in the dark. “What were you going to say?”

 

“Nothing,” Bellamy said below his breath, the word barely a whisper.

 

“Oh, come on,” Clarke pushed with a small smile of hers, “you can tell me—”

 

It struck her then, what he meant to say. _Reproduce_. The answer was obvious, so scientific, but the thought horrified her. No wonder he didn’t want to say it. It was the truth, though. It would boost their numbers, but only if the babies survived. Only if they had enough time to raise them. Only if they had enough food to feed them—

 

“Reproduce,” Clarke said, staring at him. “You were going to say reproduce.”

 

Bellamy wasn’t looking her in the face. His eyes were cast downwards, his lips pursed together. “That’s a decision on the women,” he said softly, and then he shook his head. “Not on the men.”

 

“Well, I’m glad you think that way,” Clarke told him, loosening her fingers on his back. She hadn’t realized it until just then, but they had tightened up on his shirt. “If you mentioned it to them, I’m not so sure everyone would agree.”

 

Bellamy shook his head again. “I wouldn’t mention it to them.”

 

“Good,” Clarke whispered back. “Please don’t.”

 

Bellamy raised his eyes to hers finally. He understood silently what she was saying without either of them having to address it out loud. With the group being so young, the thought hadn’t crossed any of their minds. Clarke was glad for that. She smiled slightly at Bellamy to lighten the darkened mood, lifting her hand from his side to touch the side of his face with her hand. She stroked her thumb against his cheek, tilting her chin downward and laying her forehead against his collarbone.

 

She fell asleep quickly like that, no more nightmares.

 

They repeated the pattern until there were a few days where Clarke fell down exhausted in her own tent, having no need to make it to Bellamy’s for the night. She slept soundly on her own for once, and it was nice. She figured she would be just fine for now, so she took the next few nights in her tent.

 

On the fifth night, though, Clarke found herself staring up at the ceiling of her tent and recalling Bellamy’s warmth beside her. She got up from her bed, slipped on her shoes, and walked out into the camp. She made her way through the array of tents to Bellamy’s tent just like before, and she pulled back the flap to creep inside.

 

What she saw was another girl standing up two to three feet ahead of her, pulling off her shirt.

 

“What the hell is this?” Clarke asked immediately, feeling a stinging sensation in her chest. It was an odd feeling she hadn’t expected to feel, walking into Bellamy’s tent and seeing another girl there. She hadn’t expected it at all.

 

“Clarke?” came Bellamy’s shocked voice. He looked around the girl. He was lying in bed, shirtless under the covers.

 

The girl turned around, upset, and snatched up her shirt. “I could ask you the same,” she snapped at Clarke. She turned back to Bellamy, jabbing a thumb in Clarke’s direction. “What the hell is she doing here?”

 

Clarke let out a heavy breath from her lips, feeling her lungs grow tighter. Bellamy got up from the bed, luckily still wearing his pants, and grabbed the other girl by the arm to lead her to the flap of his tent. She cursed at him the whole way, but Clarke was still in shock, staring at his empty bed with her mouth wide open.

 

“Clarke . . . _Clarke_ . . . ”

 

She whirled on Bellamy when he touched her on the shoulder.

 

“Who is she?” Clarke asked heatedly, feeling the fire course through her veins.

 

Bellamy looked as though he was shell-shocked. Slowly, he shook his head. “No one,” he said, sounding so honest about it.

 

“No one?” Clarke demanded, raising her eyebrows. “She was just inside of your tent, taking off her _shirt_ —”

 

“Okay, I used to fool around with her, all right?” Bellamy shot back. He held up his arms. “What’s the big deal?”

 

“Did you sleep with her?” Clarke found herself asking, shocked at the words coming out of her own mouth. She didn’t know where they were coming from, only that she couldn’t control them now that they were pouring out of her.

 

“What?” Bellamy asked, wrinkling his face at her.

 

“Did you _sleep_ with her?” Clarke shot back. “Tonight? During the last five nights that I wasn’t here?”

 

Bellamy just stood there with his mouth wide open. He finally closed it. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “She just came by tonight, and you hadn’t been by in a few days, so I thought—”

 

“So, what,” Clarke said, sounding a little angrier by the second, “you just _invite_ her in here?”

 

Bellamy took a step closer to her. “Since when do you care?” he shot back.

 

Clarke felt her eyes grow wider. Her mouth hung open. She stared at him, never realizing it until he said it out loud like that, but she cared. She did care. She cared very much.

 

The expression on Bellamy’s face changed as well. It fell, and he looked suddenly vulnerable and lost. He stepped forward again, reaching out a hand to her. “Clarke . . . ”

 

She stepped away from him. “No, no, you’re right—” she said, forcing the words out, trying not to look weak. Clarke was shaking her head.

 

Bellamy grabbed her by the arms. “No, no, no,” he said quickly. “I’m wrong. I’m wrong. Clarke—”

 

“No, you’re right—” Clarke choked out, trying her hardest not to look at him. She didn’t want him to see her weakness. Not now, not ever.

 

“I’m _wrong_ , Clarke,” Bellamy hissed at her. “I’m wrong, okay? You care. You care, Clarke. You care, and I care. I care . . . I . . . ”

 

Clarke stopped struggling against his hands, though it had been weakly, and she looked up at him in the dark. She could see it all over his face, the vulnerability, the truth. He was laying it all out in the open, giving her the kicking blow if she refused him. Clarke thought about doing it. She thought about it so very hard, but then she thought about how that had made her feel to see Finn walk away to Raven. If she left tonight, Bellamy would drown himself in that other girl.

 

He wouldn’t drown himself in her—like she wanted.

 

She stared up at him, realizing that was what she wanted. It was so strange, to think she could ever want Bellamy. She hadn’t realized it while it was happening, but now she was forced to face it, and it hurt. The idea of losing him to someone else hurt. The idea of sharing him hurt.

 

She wanted him for herself. All for herself.

 

 _No one else_ , she thought.

 

“What were you gonna do?” Clarke asked him. “Pretend she was me?”

 

Bellamy looked pained at her suggestion, and he cast his gaze to the floor at their feet. Slowly, he nodded his head, deciding honesty was the best policy. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, I was gonna do that.”

 

Clarke stared at him. For the longest time, they just stood there, his hands gently on her arms. He was no longer holding her tightly. With the slowest gesture possible, Clarke reached up to touch his cheek with her hand, and he raised his eyes to hers.

 

“What if you didn’t have to?” she asked him softly.

 

He parted his lips, never making a sound. Bellamy was hesitant, but eventually, he lifted his hand to her neck, raising it to her jaw line. He held her there, running his thumb against her cheek, his eyes flitting over the features of her face. And then, he pulled her closer to him, laying his lips upon hers.

 

It was a gentle kiss and sweet, and Clarke melted into his embrace, kissing him back as his hand slid into her hair.

 

When her lips broke away from his and he kissed the side of her face, Clarke said, “Not tonight, okay.” She gently pushed at his chest, separating them slightly. Bellamy pulled back, and their eyes met briefly in the dark. “I think we should wait,” she added. “I don’t want to rush into anything.”

 

Bellamy nodded his head. “Okay,” he said. His hand was on her face again, his fingers so light against her cheek. “I can still kiss you, right?”

 

Clarke closed her eyes and leaned in close, their foreheads touching, their hot breaths mingling in the cool night air.

 

“Yes,” she whispered, and he covered her lips with his again.

 

She forgot herself as he walked her backwards towards the bed, and when they had tired of kissing each other, they lay down together side by side in his bed, his body pressed close to hers and his arm draped over her middle.

 

Clarke held onto his arm, sliding her fingers over his hand. She curled her fingers between his, and Bellamy clutched them lightly back.

 

She sighed softly, closing her eyes.

 

Sleep had come easily for her that night, and it had come easily for Bellamy as well.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steady now, steady now. Don’t fear what you can’t see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Author’s Notes:** I've written another installment! They keep coming for this story, so I think I'll leave this story open as unfinished until the updates stop coming. ;-)

_* * *_

 

“Do you ever wonder if there’s anything else out there?” Clarke asked Bellamy.

 

She was lying beside him on the makeshift bed inside of his tent. They had made a habit of this, a quiet habit that no one else knew. Clarke came to his tent at night and fell asleep with Bellamy, and no one talked about it because by morning she was gone. No one saw her come, and no one saw her leave. Bellamy didn’t seem to mind much. He clung to her at night like a pillow, and breathed on her neck.

 

They shared his bed, his blankets, and his pillows. Occasionally, they shared slow, tantalizing kisses in the dark. Sometimes his hands wandered, and sometimes they didn’t.

 

Right now, they kept to themselves. Clarke was staring up at a clear patch of plastic in the top of Bellamy’s tent, which revealed the night sky above them full of stars. She couldn’t see the Ark from here. Sometimes it was point of light in the sky, moving ever so slightly against the stillness of the stars, but tonight Clarke didn’t see it.

 

Bellamy turned his head towards her on his pillow, shifting his shoulder in the process. “What?” he asked right back. Clarke glanced over at him. There was a perplexed look upon his face in the dark. “What do you mean?”

 

Clarke looked back up at the patch in the top of the tent. She leaned her head towards his, lifting up her arm and pointing at a point of light. “See,” she said, “that’s a star. A sun. There could be planets circling around it, just like this one. There could be something living out there. Other planets. Other civilizations.” Clarke lowered her arm, tilting her head until her temple leaned against Bellamy’s forehead. “Other people,” Clarke whispered, “trying to survive. Just like us.”

 

“You think too much,” Bellamy said, and she shut her eyes as she felt his hand against her cheek. He tilted her chin until she was facing him on the pillow, and Clarke opened her eyes again. “Aliens, Clarke? Really?”

 

“We lived on a spaceship most of our lives,” Clarke said matter-of-factly. “It’s not impossible.”

 

Bellamy sighed loudly, turning away. Clarke thought he was annoyed with her until he shifted on the bed and crawled on top of her all of a sudden. He stared down at her, dark hair falling forward.

 

“You think too much, Clarke.”

 

“Maybe,” she humored him.

 

“Do you need me to help you stop?” he whispered, and when he leaned in close, Clarke turned her head away just a fraction. Bellamy paused halfway towards her and drew back, aiming a quizzical look at Clarke.

 

“I don’t want to stop,” Clarke told him, raising her eyes to meet his gaze again. “I like it.”

 

Bellamy tilted his head to the side, his eyes gleaming. “Are we talking about the same thing?”

 

Subconsciously, Clarke licked her lips. “I don’t know. Are we?”

 

Bellamy leaned closer again, moving slower this time. Instead of going for her lips, he brought his face to the crook of her neck. She felt him draw in a deep breath as he ran the tip of his nose slowly against her skin. Clarke found herself breathing fast.

 

Earlier that evening while it was still hot, she had taken a swim in the local pond to wash. Clarke had scrubbed her clothes, squeezed them of water, and let them air dry on the rocks under the sun while she sat nearby, wrapped up in a blanket.

 

Bellamy must have noticed. He did. He made a low rumble in his throat, and Clarke felt his lips graze her throat. Clarke exhaled a heavy breath, and Bellamy drew back suddenly to stare at her.

 

“What?” Clarke asked, her eyes scanning his troubled face.

 

“You’re freezing,” Bellamy said.

 

Clarke realized her lips were trembling. Her teeth were chattering. She _was_ freezing. As perplexed as she was at the sudden discovery, she was alarmed as well. It could mean she was getting sick. Her head started to run with thoughts. Had she let her clothes take enough time to dry before she put them back on? It was getting closer to winter weather lately, falling into autumn all around them. The sun wasn’t as hot as it used to be. Maybe her clothes had felt dry, and maybe they hadn’t been.

 

Clarke struggled to get out from underneath Bellamy, and he rolled over onto his side to get off of her. “I have to get out of these clothes—” she said quickly, rolling up her shirt and pulling it over her head. As her teeth chattered, she pulled at the button on her pants. Bellamy was staring at her, his eyes wide.

 

“If you’re freezing, the _last_ thing you do is take off your clothes, Clarke—”

 

“I _washed_ them,” Clarke hissed through her chatter. “I think I put them on still damp. Quick,” she shot at him, arching her back and pulling off her pants beneath the blanket, “take off your clothes.”

 

Bellamy continued to stare with wide eyes. “Take off my—”

 

Clarke looked at him. She didn’t have time to argue, only plead. “Bellamy, please,” she said to him. “Body heat. It will stop the tremors.”

 

She thought he might have argued with her judging by the look on his face, but Bellamy tore off his shirt and threw it aside. He reached under the blanket to undo his pants and push them off.

 

Clarke turned her head towards him on the pillow. “Are you wearing boxers?”

 

Bellamy narrowed his eyes at her. “Yes.”

 

“Okay,” Clarke said, and she huddled close to Bellamy under the blanket, wrapping her arm around his back. She was still wearing her bra and panties. She wasn’t taking those off. She didn’t need to. Clarke felt him wrap his arms around her, one sliding beneath her and the other wrapping over her. He pulled her close. Bellamy’s body was warm, hot even, and the touch of his skin against hers stilled the tremor in her mouth for a long moment.

 

Clarke’s head was just beneath his chin, her face near his chest. She burrowed closer, nestling between his neck and chest muscles.

 

“Oh, you’re hot,” Clarke blurted out with a sigh.

 

She could hear the smirk in his voice. “Thanks, princess.”

 

Clarke fell completely still. She could feel her cheeks burning. “I didn’t mean—”

 

“I know what you meant,” Bellamy told her. “C’mon, Clarke. Take a joke.”

 

The tremble was back, and Bellamy began to run his hand up and down her back. His other hand ran the course of her arm. She was sapping up his heat. She could feel it. As long as she got rid of the chill, she would be fine. The last thing she needed to do was to get sick down here. They had no medicine, and she was the only one with any medical skills.

 

Clarke tightened her arm around him, pressing herself against Bellamy. They had kissed. They had shared this bed, but aside from that first night weeks ago, they had never talked about feelings. The furthest they went that night was admitting they cared about each other. It hadn’t gone further than that, though. They hadn’t admitted any real feelings. They hadn’t openly displayed attention towards each other in public. They weren’t together in the traditional sense. They slept in the same tent a lot, and sometimes they found comfort in each other’s mouths, but Clarke didn’t know what they were doing.

 

She didn’t know what they were to each other.

 

They were back to being hesitant with their words again, tip-toeing around each other. They could be physical with ease, but the very notion of admitting feelings out loud made a lump form in Clarke’s throat and blocked the words from coming out. Bellamy seemed the same way.

 

As comfortable as they were, they were still nowhere near it at the same time.

 

Clarke swallowed and leaned her forehead against his chest. Her tremors were fading. She pulled her hand from his back and curled it in between them, but Bellamy jumped as her hand brushed his chest.

 

“Your hand is _freezing_ ,” he said.

 

Clarke lifted her head to look him in the eyes. She held up her hand between them. “Warm it, then,” she told him softly.

 

Bellamy stared at her in the dark. He seemed to be considering her suggestion. Sometimes, Clarke wondered how far Bellamy cared for her. Did he only care enough to fuck her? They hadn’t even done that yet.

 

There were a lot of things they hadn’t done yet.

 

With his dark eyes still on her, Bellamy removed his arms from around her body. He took her hand into his grasp, covering her smaller fingers with his larger ones. Bellamy watched her silently as he rubbed his hands over her chilled skin. Finally, he brought their hands to his mouth. Without removing his eyes from her face, he parted his lips and breathed hot air between his hands onto hers.

 

Clarke stared back the whole time, unable to take her eyes off of him. They were such a strange pair. Mocking each other one moment, denying attraction the next, and then sharing such an intimate moment like this without a kiss or inappropriate touch between them.

 

Bellamy pulled her hand closer to his lips and pressed a kiss onto her thumb.

 

Clarke’s lips parted further.

 

“I know how to make you warm,” Bellamy said without breaking eye contact. His usual bout of cheekiness wasn’t there.

 

Clarke remembered suddenly his previous dalliances. She wasn’t sure sometimes if she wanted to go there with Bellamy. He might shut off and lose interest with her, and she liked what they had right now. She liked its simplicity.

 

She didn’t want it to end.

 

Clarke closed her eyes briefly, shaking her head. “I don’t think—”

 

“That’s your problem, Clarke. You think too much.”

 

“I do not,” Clarke protested.

 

Bellamy was still rubbing her hand. “Yeah, you do.”

 

“Someone needs to think here,” Clarke said, looking him straight in the eyes.

 

Bellamy paused at that, a noticeable change in his eyes. He narrowed them slightly, but knowingly. “You’re scared,” he said.

 

Clarke felt her lips hanging open. She closed her mouth. “No,” she whispered, “I’m not—” But it was futile arguing with him when he already knew it. He already saw it. Bellamy let go of her hand, and his thumb grazed over her chin.

 

“What are you scared of?”

 

Clarke closed her eyes. “Nothing,” she said, unable to lie to his face.

 

“Say that with your eyes open,” Bellamy challenged her.

 

Clarke opened her eyes, but she couldn’t lie to him this time.

 

This time the truth came out.

 

“You,” she breathed out, her chest collapsing with the breath leaving her lungs.

 

Bellamy looked confused at first, and then he looked shocked at her admission. He placed his hand on the side of her face, and then he ran his fingers back through her hair. “You still don’t see it, do you?” he asked her, sounding more incredulous than hurt.

 

“See what?” she asked him, unconsciously lifting her hand to touch his on the side of her face, where it had rested near her ear.

 

“How many girls do I strip down to my boxers for,” Bellamy told her, “just to keep them warm?” He raised his eyebrows playfully. “With no payoff, I might add. And how many _girls_ do I share my portion with when she acts stupid and gives her portion away to some other kid just because they’re sick or hurt?” Bellamy leaned closer to her face. “How many girls do I let into my tent to sleep in my bed for nothing that I wouldn’t kick out in a heartbeat?” His eyes scanned her face, all seriousness now. “How many, Clarke? Tell me. How many?”

 

Clarke was at a loss for words. Her mouth was hanging open, unable to close itself. Her hand was still on his, too, until Bellamy broke the silence between them.

 

“You aren’t shivering anymore,” he said. He pulled his hand away from her face, away from her hair. Bellamy rolled over, and then he sat up, grabbing his pants.

 

Clarke sat up, too, wanting to say something. But what could she say? When no words came to her, she sidled up close to his back and placed her hands on him. Bellamy froze, but he didn’t respond. Hesitantly, Clarke leaned down and kissed the spot in between his shoulder blades. She smoothed her hand over his back slowly, trailing her lips against the heat of his skin.

 

When Bellamy turned to face her, Clarke looked him in the eyes. “Just me,” she finally answered.

 

For a moment, they did nothing but stare at each other, and then Bellamy crushed his lips into hers. Clarke wrapped her arms around his shoulders, her fingers sliding into his hair. She parted her lips, kissing him back in earnest, as he pushed her onto the bed. He was on top of her, kicking his pants off again, which he hadn’t even gotten all the way on before. His hands were all over her, moving too fast, his lips pressing for urgency.

 

“Bellamy—” Clarke said between their lips, pushing gently at his chest. “Slow down—”

 

He pulled back slightly, his forehead against hers. Bellamy breathed in deep. When he regained himself, he leaned into her again and caught her lips in a slow, hot kiss. Clarke slipped her fingers through his hair, against his scalp, savoring the warmth of his body all around her and beneath her fingertips. When he curled his fingers underneath the waistband of her panties and pulled them off of her legs, she didn’t try to stop him. She kept kissing him, even as his hand slid between her legs and up her thigh.

 

They didn’t go too far. Bellamy showed her pleasure without sex, and Clarke returned the touch by sliding her hand beneath his boxers. When they were spent and satisfied, he found his place beside her on the bed on his side, his hand grazing her shoulder. After his fingers passed over her skin, his lips came down to replace it. Clarke closed her eyes, leaning her head against his.

 

“So,” Bellamy suddenly asked her out of the blue, “what are your aliens doing now?”

 

Clarke couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped her. “What?”

 

“Your aliens you were thinking about earlier,” Bellamy mused with a smirk appearing on his lips. “I recall you talking about aliens before we got sidetracked.”

 

“Oh,” Clarke said, still regaining her breath. “Right. Them.”

 

Bellamy laughed low.

 

Clarke couldn’t hold back her grin. “Shut up,” she shot back.

 

Bellamy’s hand found its way to her face. He ran his thumb over her chin. “Okay,” he said, humoring her. Despite his head lying on the pillow, he cocked it slightly, his forehead leaning into the pillow as his chin rose. A smirk shone upon his lips.

 

Clarke felt a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth at his expression. She turned away from Bellamy, looking back to the top of the tent. “They are probably lying in their beds,” she suggested, “just like us, wondering if there’s someone else out there, too.”

 

“Sounds boring,” Bellamy retorted.

 

“Maybe they’re in the middle of a war,” she offered, raising her eyebrows.

 

“Even if they are, they might be dying,” he responded.

 

“They might be,” Clarke whispered back, feeling infinitely sad at the idea.

 

“We’re not,” Bellamy murmured, and Clarke felt his breath close to her cheek. She closed her eyes as Bellamy’s lips brushed her cheek, and his fingers caressed her face with the lightest brush. He kissed her gently, teasing her thoughts away from deeper things and trying to get them back onto him.

 

Clarke turned into him to look him in the eyes. “We might be,” she whispered back, caressing the side of his face with the back of her hand.

 

Bellamy furrowed his brow at her comment, but he drew closer until Clarke closed her eyes and felt his lips on hers once more. She touched his face with her palm and then her fingers, falling into the kiss. It was soft and slow, drawing her away from her thoughts like an ocean tide pulling her back, pushing her forward again just slightly, and then pulling her further out once more. She felt the pull of his lips like something familiar and yet foreign, strange and yet deep. It ignited the embers in her fingertips, sending tingles up through her spine.

 

“You’re just trying to make me stop thinking,” Clarke said softly when he pulled back for a moment, and then he moved on top of her.

 

“I am not,” Bellamy protested in a quiet voice near her lips. He drew back from her just enough to allow his hands to pull down at the straps of her bra, sliding it down her arms with a gentle caress of his fingers against her skin along the way. He bent over her, placing his lips upon her neck, sucking on a pulse point. Clarke drew in a shuddering breath. “I’m just trying to get you to think of only me,” he whispered against her skin. “Is it working?”

 

His hands went down to her sides beneath the blankets, and Clarke felt his fingertips graze her skin. She sighed into his touch, tilting her head back into the pillow to give him more access to her neck. She closed her eyes, savoring the touch. “It’s too late,” Clarke murmured back to him.

 

Bellamy paused, pulling back from her. He stared at her in the dark, and Clarke saw the uncertainty lingering there in his eyes. It wasn’t a look she often saw on Bellamy’s face, and yet on his face it inspired comfort instead of driving it away. Sure-headed Bellamy, with too much pride at stake to be shown to be weak.

 

Clarke reached up, cupping his cheek with her hand.

 

“I already do,” she told him steadily, never breaking eye contact.

 

Bellamy’s eyes searched her face. When he leaned down and captured her lips again, Clarke could feel the heavy beat of his heart against her chest, and every anxiety, every doubt drowned beneath it.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're acting your thin disguise, all your perfectly delivered lines.

_* * *_

 

For one day out of a hundred, the air was hot as hell.

 

Clarke wanted to go for a walk instead of staying put as usual. There were still grounds to explore beyond their camp in a safe direction. The grounders had lain claim to the area between their camp landing and Mount Weather, but stretching west was an expanse of open territory and Clarke had mapped what she believed to be a relatively safe path through it.

 

The air was muggy, but she was sure the cool chill of autumn would come back before the day was through. As nice as it was to feel warmth after the increasing cold that bit through their blankets at night and brought her shivers no matter how tightly she looped the blankets about her or how close she clung to Bellamy, Clarke didn’t want the day to go to waste or spend it doing chores.

 

For once, she wanted to do something for herself. Something that would benefit everyone, of course. Clarke wasn’t about to go traipsing through the forest for a vacation or for the hell of it, or waste her time in such a manner. With their lives in constant peril, Clarke thought only about the group and rarely about herself or her own comfort.

 

Lifting her backpack and shouldering it on her right side, Clarke raised her head and glanced over the gated wall of their community. She was trying to imagine the journey before her in her head, trying to picture the path her feet would take, hearing the crackle of dead leaves crunching beneath her feet.

 

But those leaves were not imaginary ones, and when Clarke turned her head, she spotted Bellamy coming up on her left side.

 

“Where are you going, princess?” he commented sharply, his eyes taking note of her backpack. He froze in his steps as he noticed it. “Hiking? In _this_ heat?”

 

Clarke rolled her eyes. No matter how many nights they shared in his tent, in the broad daylight, Bellamy was often a different person. It was like the night gave him freedom, while the day harbored him within a cage. It was suitable, Clarke thought, that the darkness was his friend and not the light.

 

“No,” she said tersely, gripping the strap of her backpack within her hand as she looked away. “Well, yes. I’ve mapped out the local area and the possible danger zones, and I’m going to survey the land to the west. The grounders occupy the land to the east and north, leaving the west and south open.”

 

“And you’re going alone,” said Bellamy. It wasn’t a question, but more of a grim statement. One he clearly wasn’t happy with.

 

“One person is less likely to draw attention than a crowd,” Clarke said, glancing back at him. Bellamy’s cheekbones were tight, his jaw set firmly in place. His face was stark and controlled, his dismay plain and readable.

 

He wasn’t trying to hide it from her.

 

“So are two,” Bellamy added haphazardly. The tightness in his face remained, but his voice was lighter. “I’m going with you.”

 

“Bellamy, no—”

 

But before she could say anything further, Bellamy had slung his long gun over his shoulders, the strap lying straight across his chest from the opposite shoulder to his hip. It hung there, bouncing against his leg as he walked forward past her.

 

“You aren’t wandering into the wild alone, Clarke.” He paused a few feet ahead of her on the path towards the gate opening, turning around to face Clarke as he spoke. “Not when there are grounders, wild panthers, and god knows what else out there waiting to tear the skin from your bones.” Bellamy’s look was solemn, but his eyes were sparkling with a dark sort of amusement as he regarded her. “I’m coming with you, like it or not.”

 

Clarke wanted to argue with him, but she knew he was just as stubborn as her in many ways—and more stubborn than her in others. She set her jaw, and pursed her lips. _So be it_ , she thought. If Bellamy was coming with her, then Bellamy was coming with her, and there was nothing she could do or say to stop him.

 

“Pack a water,” Clarke told him as she brushed past him, their arms grazing as she passed. “It’s hot, and you’re going to need it.”

 

The walk was quiet at first. Bellamy grabbed the water bottle Clarke insisted he take with him, and he stuffed it into a large pocket in his pants. Not three feet from the gate, Bellamy pulled the gun from his shoulders and held it properly. He was untrusting of the environment, and Clarke didn’t blame him.

 

For her own part, Clarke had packed a gun, a smaller one she had found in the bunker they had visited where they found the guns and extra blankets and other supplies. It was in her pants, out of sight. Clarke couldn’t handle her map as well as hold a gun, and she didn’t expect she would need it immediately in this neck of the woods. Plus, with Bellamy’s gun out beside her now, there was no point in hers being out, too.

 

They walked side by side for most of the journey, trudging along the forest floor beneath a canopy of dark green leaves. The light filtered through them, sending sharp rays of gold down through the trees and illuminating their way. It was beautiful and peaceful and quiet, and Clarke didn’t want to speak out and break it.

 

Bellamy, it seemed, didn’t want to speak for other reasons. Grounders, Clarke thought, being the main one. He was tense and wary the whole time. Whenever she looked over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of him, his face was marked with a dark guarded look that shone through his eyes beneath the curls of his black hair as well as the tightness in his jaw.

 

“Come on, Bellamy,” Clarke finally spoke up, breaking the silence. “You’re not scared of a little walk, are you?” She was just teasing him. Of course, she wasn’t going to put her own guard down for a second, but Clarke also wasn’t being as obvious about it as he was.

 

“Don’t make a joke out of it, princess,” Bellamy said without looking at her. His gaze was casting out over their surroundings, slowly left to right and back again.

 

“I’m not,” Clarke said flippantly. “I’m making a joke out of you.”

 

His footsteps stopped. Clarke stopped, too. She looked back at him. Bellamy had halted in place amongst the fallen russet leaves, gazing at her with an unreadable expression.

 

“You got some nerve,” he began, but Clarke cut him off.

 

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not around anybody,” Clarke said, throwing her gaze around them as she held her arms out on both sides. “And yet you still persist with the act. It’s getting old, Bellamy. You can’t pick and choose when and how you want to speak to me. If this was how you were going to spend your day, then head back to the camp and I’ll finish this on my own.”

 

She turned away from him and continued walking, quicker this time, hearing his footsteps hurrying after her in no time at all.

 

“And what do you plan on finding on this journey?” Bellamy persisted, ignoring everything she just said to him as if she hadn’t said it at all or it hadn’t affected him, which bothered her more than him plainly _reacting_ to it. At night, he was all soft kisses and sweet but blithe whispered words, and in the daylight, he was all harsh edges and cut off from the world again, including her.

 

If he had armor, it was the kind that lied deep beneath the skin.

 

“Supplies,” Clarke said, her voice growing thin with exasperation. “Or storage. Shelter, even. Any or all of the above. Maybe further inland is where we need to be. There are other clans between us and the ocean, and we don’t know if we can trust them.”

 

“We can’t trust grounders,” Bellamy asserted, firm and unyielding.

 

 _I knew you would say that_ , Clarke thought grimly, setting her lips into a thin line. She had wanted to believe Finn when he said they could trust the grounders by the sea, but they hadn’t been able to trust anyone down here so far. Sometimes not even themselves, and she wasn’t going to bet their lives on complete strangers. They had a death toll already, and it was rising everyday.

 

“There was a building on the map, and it had a—”

 

Clarke was cut off by the sound of a horn, and Bellamy’s hand was on her arm in a heartbeat, pulling her back as her feet tried to stalk ahead of him. Both of them froze, staring ahead in horror as another horn sounded in the distance from the same direction as before.

 

“Grounders,” hissed Bellamy, and Clarke knew with a stake of fear into her heart that he was right.

 

“Have they seen us?” she asked hurriedly, looking around them for movement in the trees but seeing nothing at all. It was as still as a summer breeze, the leaves shifting slightly in the faint wind and nothing more. There was no rustling, no sudden movement around them. Quickly, Bellamy snatched her arm and began to run steadily through the trees towards a clearing ahead, but he froze a few feet from the edge of the trees.

 

There, in the center of the clearing, was a little house of sorts situated behind a gate. There was a gravel path and a large patch of dirt to the left of the building, and to the right, a fenced square of various stones and statues. Winged people in stone. _Angels_ , Clarke thought, recalling their visage through her eyes in the books she used to read as a child.

 

“ _Quick_ ,” Bellamy hissed, and together in hand, they sprinted across the clearing and leapt over the gate instead of running around it and wasting time. Clarke didn’t even stop to think she had been holding Bellamy’s hand in a death grip. In a life or death situation, it was the last thing racing through her mind.

 

Clarke checked the door handle, and found it opened easily. Unlocked. She ran inside, Bellamy following, and she shut the door behind him. As Clarke leaned against the door and tried to steady her ragged breathing, Bellamy left her side and hurried over to the benches in the center of the wide room. He attempted to push at one to lodge it against the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

 

“It won’t move,” Bellamy called out to her. “We’re sitting ducks in here.”

 

Clarke searched her mind for a solution. They had to hide, but what good was hiding if they had been spotted either in the forest or on their dash through the open clearing? They’d be burned down with the building, ashes to feed the soil for next spring.

 

She pushed herself away from the door. “There must be something,” Clarke said. “A storage room or a basement. Let’s find it.”

 

They walked further into the house past rows of benches and a podium. Maybe it wasn’t a house, Clarke thought, but a gathering place of some sort. It was unlike anything she had ever seen on the Ark. Past the podium, there was a door into another room full of old tables and metal chairs. It looked like a mess hall with a long counter across the left side of the room, which bent around the corner that merged with the north end. Broken glass panes set in metal were raised along the counter’s edge, sharp points of light glistening as the beams broke through the windows and caught on them.

 

“Sitting ducks,” Bellamy repeated below his breath, and Clarke glared at him.

 

“Well, help me _find_ something,” she hissed. Turning away, Clarke hurried across the room to another door. Through it, they heard the call of the horn grow closer until it was almost upon them. The steady pound of what sounded like hundreds of feet shook the ground. Clarke turned to Bellamy, fear in her eyes.

 

 _Grounders_ , they both thought simultaneously. Clarke could read it in his eyes as plainly as she thought it.

 

Bellamy hurried across the floor, ducking below sight of the windows. “I thought you said this part of the land was uninhabited,” he accused, checking door after door and looking at the floor for an entryway.

 

“I thought it was,” Clarke responded as she threw open another door. Maybe the grounders were just passing through, or maybe it was war. “Quick! Here!”

 

Clarke ran into the room. It was within a hallway they had found, situated in the center of the building somewhere. There was a rug, but beneath the rug, she had seen a latch sticking out with a small looped rope handle. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

 

She gripped the rope and pulled up. It revealed a dark space beneath, but there were small grates near the top of the basement level. Ground level from outside, letting a soft shade of light spill through to the darkness.

 

“Down here,” Clarke said, and she felt down, finding a ladder with her hand.

 

As she tried descending it, her foot slipped because of a missing rung. Clarke tumbled to the bottom, landing hard on the ground below in agony. Her leg was twisted beneath her, but she bit down viciously on her tongue rather than scream and give them away. The salty taste of blood filled her mouth. Clarke closed her eyes, grabbing her knee and squeezing tight.

 

It wasn’t long before Bellamy was down in the basement with her, the light from above extinguished as he carefully shut the floor entryway. The rug was fixed to it from above, maintaining the appearance of a cover over the basement entrance from prying eyes.

 

Clarke felt Bellamy’s hands feeling around in the dark frantically, touching her leg, finding her, before he spoke in a low hurried voice.

 

“Are you alright?” he demanded.

 

“My ankle,” Clarke ground out. “I sprained it. I can feel it.” A sudden throbbing pang jolted through her leg as she tried to move it, and she hissed against it. “I can’t walk, Bellamy—I can’t walk.”

 

“We don’t have to walk,” Bellamy said, and she could tell by his voice that he was trying to assuage her, but he was afraid, too. “Here, I’m going to move you. Okay?”

 

“Check the room first.” Clarke gripped her knee as if it might help with the pain. “See if you can find anything.” She looked up at him, even though he couldn’t see her face. “I’ll wait here,” she added wryly.

 

Clarke could feel Bellamy’s pause in the dark rather than see it, and it made her smile despite her ankle.

 

“You got it, princess.”

 

Bellamy was up and moving before Clarke could say anything else. She shut her eyes as she listened to his rummaging. The feet were upon them by now, running over the clearing outside of the building. It definitely wasn’t a house, Clarke had figured out. It looked more like a place of meeting, convention, or worship. There were no beds, for one, and too many chairs.

 

Bellamy must have found something because he came back to her.

 

“I found something,” he whispered, and Clarke was about to ask him what, but his arms were under her legs and behind her back, lifting her, before she could. He carried her instead of dragging her, which softened her irritation against him. It had accumulated throughout the day with his attitude towards her as it always had, but Clarke found it hard to remember why she resisted him when he always came back to this.

 

Back to caring.

 

 _He never stopped_ , she realized as Bellamy placed her down on a cot he had found in the basement. There were a few of them visible in the barely there light from the grates above their heads. The sun was getting low in the sky, the rays of light darker. Ever since this afternoon when Bellamy had insisted to come with her, it hit her now why.

 

 _He was worried about me_. Clarke rested her head against a pillow, dry and starchy, but it was better than nothing. _He still is_.

 

“They’re here,” Bellamy said in a low voice, glancing up at the grates.

 

Clarke looked, too. She could see their feet and legs as some of them jogged by, while others walked. They were stopping there for the evening.

 

Making camp.

 

Clarke heard the orders for preparations bellowed out. Her heart began to beat faster. They wouldn’t be able to get back tonight. Their people would panic. Both of their leaders gone. _They haven’t returned_ , she could hear them saying in her head. _What are we going to do? Are they dead? Are we going to die, too?_

 

Bellamy was rummaging through her backpack. Clarke hadn’t realized it was no longer on her back. It must have fallen off when she fell from the ladder. “What are you looking for?” she asked.

 

“This,” he said, and in the dying light, she could see a water bottle and a bag of berries in his hand. “It looks like we’re going to be here for a while. They haven’t spotted us, or they’d come storming in to kill us. They’re making enough racket they won’t hear us, but come nightfall, we have to keep quiet.”

 

Bellamy unscrewed the water bottle, holding it up to her lips. “Come on, Clarke. Drink.”

 

She drank, spilling it over her lips. “I’m not hungry.”

 

“Okay.” Clarke heard him rummaging again. Putting the berries away.

 

“What if they don’t leave by morning?”

 

“We better hope they do,” Bellamy said.

 

“And what if they don’t.”

 

There was silence for a moment. Bellamy didn’t speak. He didn’t move. Then, she heard him shift his weight as he lowered himself from kneeling to sitting. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

 

“Well,” Clarke mused, rolling her head to the side to try and get a better view of him. “At least I have company. Imagine me here alone through this, huh?”

 

Bellamy was quiet. The kind of quiet that sent an uncomfortable shiver down the length of her spine. “You shouldn’t have thought about going alone,” he said, speaking barely above his breath.

 

Clarke turned her head away from him again. She could hear it in the tone of his voice just like before, that same tone of worry. The way she had spotted it in his actions as well, it told her all she needed to know about how he felt in times she fell in doubt.

 

They were trying. Night to night, they tried to have a spark of something just for themselves between them, but it was harder than it looked in this ravaged and war torn world they had landed right in the middle of. Being normal, even being together, it wasn’t the same here. Maintaining a relationship, it wasn’t the same. Things would be good for a week, and then the next week would be hell. They stood together, but they were publicly at odds. They disagreed on things. They saw things differently.

 

But they saw each other the same way.

 

“Right,” she murmured, but it wasn’t in a smart tone. “I just wanted some ‘me’ time.”

 

“You know, Clarke, you can’t lie for shit.” Bellamy leaned his back against the wall beside the head of her cot. “You also can’t be a hero all the time. I know you weren’t doing this for you. You wanted to do this for them. But not everything can be fixed, not everything has a magical solution, and one day you’re going to have to learn that, princess. Putting yourself into a life or death situation doesn’t help _them_. Without you, they won’t have anything. They’ll be lost.”

 

Clarke closed her eyes, letting out a low exhale of breath through her lips.

 

“They’d have you,” she said softly, feeling the ache of her ankle turn into a dull throb.

 

Bellamy didn’t say anything, though. The hours passed by slowly, the sun setting through the grates and fires blazing into the sky from the grounder camp right above their heads. Night descended around them until the sky was black and speckled with little white points of light and burning at the edges with red and golden flames, and through it all, Bellamy didn’t say another word.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The killer in me is the killer in you.

_* * *_

 

A sharp shock of brilliant light, striking upon her vision like a bolt of lightning—something she had never seen until her time here on Earth—bolted Clarke awake in her bed. The ray was blinding until she opened her eyes, and then it was gone. Only the darkness remained in its place.

 

Clarke realized quickly she wasn’t in her bed, but lying on a stiff and dirty cot in the bottom of a stuffy, unfamiliar basement. The grates were still there, lying in two neat little rows on either side of the high walls. Beyond the grates, she could see the fading flames of the fires burning low, smoke arising in their midst. The grey wisps twisted in odd curves as they rose into the black sky.

 

Her mouth was parched. A chill had taken over the air as she slept, and she was freezing because of it. There were no blankets on her, no covers upon the bed. Her arms were cold despite her jacket, which she hadn’t been wearing when she had fallen asleep. Her teeth chattered slightly, and Clarke rolled over as she tried to adjust her eyes to the darkness. She needed to see.

 

The cot was on level with the floor, no frame below it, and Clarke’s hand landed on another hand as she rolled over and grasped for purchase while pushing her body up from the bed. Her eyes flew down, her heart leaping into her throat, but she recognized the silhouette of his form in the blackness. She had shared a tent with Bellamy for a countless amount of nights. She ought to know him by now, even without a good light to see him by.

 

He had fallen asleep on the floor beside her, using his own jacket as a pillow. His hand, which was resting on her bed along with his forearm, seemed to be placed in an oddly protective position next to her as if his hand there might make it all better somehow. His head was turned away from her, his dark curls a bundle in the darkness. His face was hidden entirely from view by it.

 

As her eyes adjusted to the dark, Clarke tried to reckon how long she had been asleep. Maybe if she could judge the points of light in the sky, she could figure out how long it would be before dawn. Before the grounder army right above their heads woke up, continuing on their march.

 

Her heart reverberated violently inside her chest once she realized they had been marching in the same direction her and Bellamy had come from. Their camp.

 

Clarke tried to move, which proved to be easier now than it was earlier, and yet the pain was still too unbearable for her to walk properly. She could limp, Clarke reckoned, but they wouldn’t get very far on her leg in this condition. She glanced over at Bellamy and reached out her hand to his shoulder, shaking him gently.

 

“Bellamy,” she whispered, knowing he wasn’t the type to shout when awakened. Lucky, for both of them.

 

Bellamy rolled over immediately, lifting his head with a jolt, looking around for the sound of her voice. When he spotted her, his head stilled in her direction.

 

Bellamy pushed himself up from the floor with his forearms.

 

“How are you feeling?” was the first thing out of his mouth, and then he glanced around their surroundings. She could only tell by the cast of his silhouette. “Has something happened? Are they moving?”

 

A smile quirk of her lips almost brought a smile to her face. “I’m alright,” Clarke whispered back. “And no, nothing’s happened. Not yet, anyway.”

 

Bellamy looked back to her. “Can you move your leg?”

 

“I can move it,” she whispered, “but I can’t walk on it.”

 

He swore under his breath.

 

“Hey,” Clarke said softly, reaching out for his face. It was instinctual. There was nothing to it. Nothing about it. Her fingers grazed his cheek, catching on stubble. “We’ll be alright. We’ll make it out of here. We always do, huh? Don’t give up so easily, Bellamy. I’m the one with the sprained ankle, and if I’ve still got hope . . . ” She trailed off, her hand slipping away from his face.

 

Bellamy was quiet in the darkness, and Clarke wished she could see his face. His expression would tell her everything. Bellamy wasn’t good at hiding things from her. Not as good as he thought he was, anyway. He was still looking at her, by as much as she could see of his silhouette.

 

“Look at us,” he murmured, “whispering in the dark, hoping no one will hear us. Trying not to wake up the whole camp.” Bellamy was silent for a moment, and then all Clarke could hear was the sadness in his voice laced with what sounded like happiness in equal measure. “Just like old times, huh, princess?”

 

He spoke of ‘old times’ like it was a year ago instead of a week ago.

 

Clarke felt the frown on her face.

 

A week on Earth was an eternity in space, especially with how fast time moved down here. One week felt like a year, and two weeks . . .

 

They had landed here no more than two months ago by the scratch marks on her calendar back home. _Home_ , Clarke thought with a sudden rushing clarity. What was home to her? A camp they had built with their own bare hands, not a space station made of cold metal and hard glass floating through the black, empty void beyond their sky? Clarke could sometimes only just remember what it was like to live in space, save for her memories of her father. Those were crystal clear like yesterday’s morning dew.

 

Down here every second mattered, and any second they could die.

 

Maybe that was why they kept pushing back their feelings every time they came up, every time they felt them. They couldn’t be leaders and lovers at the same time. Their feelings always got in the way of their judgment. They had tried, and it had failed. It had failed, but it hadn’t stopped Clarke from reaching out for his face and touching him. It didn’t stop her from recalling the warmth of Bellamy’s lips and the musky scent of his skin beneath the sweat and the dirt that covered him daily.

 

It didn’t stop her from needing him. Or from wanting him.

 

Clarke swallowed and turned her head away from him, even though he probably couldn’t see the motion in the lack of light. “There’s a reason they’re called old times,” she forced herself to say, even though it cut deep to the bone.

 

“You’re still mad about my decision.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.

 

“Your decision got a boy killed,” Clarke said, her voice dangerously low. It hurt her to say it, but it was the truth. “Several, actually.”

 

“Yeah, well,” Bellamy replied, his voice terse, “no one knows that more than me, Clarke, so save your judgment for someone who cares. Finn’s good at that. You should talk to him about it.”

 

Bellamy spun away from her, pushing himself to stand. His clothes scraped over the dirt on the ground, and she looked up to see him framed in the faded orange glow of the fires beyond the grates. He was looking up at them, looking through them as he turned his head. She wondered if he was gauging the numbers of the camp or if he could even see anything. He was silent the whole time.

 

When Bellamy returned to her cot, he avoided her and rummaged as quietly as possible through her bag. Clarke remembered with vivid clarity the event they had just spoken of. They were doing a perimeter check beyond their borders, an order Bellamy had given against her better judgment, and one of the groups had been ambushed by grounders.

 

They were all slaughtered, and then left as a message.

 

Clarke had buried them. She had mourned them. During their eulogy, Bellamy had stood three feet away from her, listening silently all the while.

 

She had visited his tent that night, and they had fought. She had been tired and weary from crying, and Clarke couldn’t remember what Bellamy had said to her, only that it had been enough to make her raise her hand against him and him catch it. They had struggled, toppling to his bed, and then she had kissed him so fiercely to forget the pain. Bellamy had returned the force of her lips with a heat that came from deep within his core. It would have burned a hole straight through the bed had it been real like the heat of a fire.

 

It had ended with them having sex, with her claw marks in his back and his heavy breathing in her ear. It was the first time for that between them, and too many bad feelings fueling it for Clarke to just forget about it.

 

She had avoided him for a few days after that, and then she had returned at night, but only because it was cold.

 

“ _Don’t even think this means anything, Bellamy, because it doesn’t_ ,” she had said to him. He had regarded her with that sharp gaze of his, that gaze that saw through everything, even her. But he had said nothing as she walked past him to his bed, and he had said nothing as she curled up beside him afterwards.

 

There were some things they could give up, but others were not so easy.

 

Bellamy found a flashlight in her bag, and he aimed it down at the ground before turning it on. Alarmed, Clarke tried to reach out for him to grab his wrist, but he was just out of her reach. “Bellamy,” she hissed, “put that away before they see us—”

 

“They’re all asleep, princess,” he retorted, placing the small flashlight between his lips to hold it. It was aimed down at her ankle. Bellamy reached out, pulling up her pant leg. He unlaced her boot, gently removing it, and then he peeled her sock down. Bellamy leaned closer, examining her ankle between his hands as the light of the flashlight moved with the turns of his head.

 

Letting go of her leg, Bellamy took the flashlight out of his mouth and turning it off so the light wouldn’t bounce off of anything else and draw attention.

 

“It’s not sprained,” he said in a low voice. “It’s dislocated or broken. I can see it.” He handed her the flashlight. “Bite down on it.”

 

Clarke was sure she had only sprained her ankle, but without being able to check it or see it for herself, maybe through the pain she had misdiagnosed herself. It could happen, and it had happened before.

 

“You’re going to pop me back into place, doctor?” she smarted back to him.

 

She was glad she had taught him some basic survival techniques, like popping a broken bone or dislocated joint back into place, but now seemed like the worst time to try it. Or the best, if every grounder above their heads was asleep.

 

Bellamy gently took her ankle back into his hands. “Bite down now, Clarke.”

 

Clarke pursed her lips, but did as he instructed. She bit down hard on the metal tube of the flashlight, and covered her mouth with both hands just in case.

 

Bellamy popped her ankle back into place, and Clarke heard herself grunt but suppress all other sound of pain. Her hands had a vice grip on her mouth. Despite the pain, she could feel the difference throbbing through her muscles. Maybe she could walk on it again come morning when they had to escape, if the camp left.

 

“Better?” he asked, and Clarke nodded her head until she remembered that he couldn’t see it.

 

“Yes,” she breathed out.

 

“Good,” Bellamy said after a beat, which made her wonder if he had nodded his head at first, too. She lifted her eyes back to him. He was pulling her sock back up, pulling her pant leg back down. His hands were gentle all the while.

 

“Bellamy . . . ” she began, hesitating.

 

Bellamy froze in the dark. “If you’re going to make some smart comment, Clarke, don’t.” His hands were still on her leg. When he seemed to realize this, he pulled them both away, and sat back on the ground beside her cot. “I’m tired. We ought to get some more sleep before morning. We can’t leave until they do, anyway.”

 

He lay down on the ground again, turning his back to her. Clarke could hear it. She could see it in her mind’s eye, even if she couldn’t really see it. There was a sound of soft scuffling, and then silence as he stilled in place. Clarke lay quietly back down herself, staring up in the blackness at a roof she couldn’t see either.

 

They were both two stupid young kids. Her in reality, and him in heart.

 

The silence lulled her close to falling asleep, but not quite. The thoughts lingering on the edge of her mind wouldn’t let her sleep, no matter how much she wanted to. Clarke felt her brain dredging up close to the shore, if the shore was the world of dreaming and ocean the reality, but she never quite reached the land. Always, always the tide pulled her back out to sea.

 

A crunch of sand woke her up completely, eyes popping open, as she turned her head in the dark to look for Bellamy.

 

He was crouched there beside her cot, gazing at her in the dark.

 

Her throat was dry, and she tried to speak. “Bellamy, I—” But the words caught in her throat as the silhouette shifted quickly in the dark and an alarming feeling gripped at Clarke’s heart. She realized the shadow was too large to be Bellamy. A big hand with thick, overpowering fingers crushed itself around her throat with a grip of steel and dragged her from the bed.

 

Her instinct wasn’t to scream, but to fight back.

 

Clarke snatched at the hand, dragging claw marks through the calloused skin to draw blood as skin came away under her fingernails. She kicked at the sand and dirt, even with her wounded ankle. She bit down through the pain and kicked with all of her might, scrambling to get away from the hand around her throat.

 

There was a sickening sound in the dark; the sharp, wet slide of blade through flesh and blood, and then sudden stillness behind her. The hand slowly lost its grip from her neck before falling away completely. Clarke breathed in suddenly, harshly, looking up in the blackness for a face and seeing the glint of light on a blade, the gush of black blood all over it.

 

The body fell first to its knees, and then nearly toppled, but a hand must’ve been holding it up from the back. Slowly, Bellamy lowered the man’s body to the dirt until it lay upon the ground, lifeless.

 

The blade still glinted red in the dark before it fell from Bellamy’s hand, landing with a dull thud against the dirt as well.

 

Clarke had to crawl to Bellamy, finding him sitting back down on the ground in shock with his legs before him when she reached him. She reached out for him, hand finding one of his legs, and held on as she pulled herself closer to his lap. She was still breathing heavy when she laid her head upon it, her hand grasping his thigh. A wordless thank you, a silent comfort.

 

Bellamy’s hand was in her hair, stroking it suddenly, and Clarke closed her eyes. The grounder must have seen the light of the flashlight and gone to investigate. Clarke wondered if he had told any of his friends, if any more of them would be coming before long to check behind him. Maybe they had heard a noise from the scuffle, or maybe in the morning they would recognize he was gone.

 

Clarke didn’t want to die.

 

Her hand clung harder to Bellamy’s thigh as she pushed herself up from his lap. Clarke couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she could tell he was shocked at his own actions. He hadn’t been able to kill Atom in the woods, but he had been able to kill a grounder down here in this basement to save her life and his. Maybe he had saved them, or maybe they were already dead and they just didn’t know it yet.

 

There were too many maybes and not enough surety.

 

Clarke reached out for his face in the dark, found his cheek with the palm of her hand, and then found that it was wet with tears. “Oh, Bellamy—”

 

She wiped away the tears with her thumb, feeling a lot like his mother, but then she did something that made her feel decidedly not like his mother.

 

She kissed him.

 

Bellamy’s lips were cold this time, chapped, but familiar. Clarke wanted to say _thank you_ , but how did you tell someone thank you for killing a person, even if it was in self-defense? She gripped his cheek hard, feeling his lips crushed against hers, though at first they didn’t move.

 

And then, he kissed her back. His hand was in her hair, and his other hand still propped him up against the cold, hard ground. If they were going to die tonight, Clarke didn’t want to die before she told him how she felt. She didn’t want to die with words unspoken on the tip of her tongue, despite everything they had been through together.

 

She wanted to die with him knowing the truth.

 

Their mouths parted slowly from the kiss, his hot breath washing over her lips.

 

“I love you, Bellamy,” Clarke whispered through the cold, black air.

 

Bellamy could have frozen in place or jerked back in response, but all he did was run his calloused thumb along her cheek and reply, “Is that so, princess?”

 

“I wanted you to know,” Clarke murmured in a strangely calm voice, although her heart raced inside her ribcage with the knowledge that more grounders could come down at any moment, “in case we die. Here. Tonight.”

 

Clarke could feel Bellamy’s smile, not see it. “Yeah,” he murmured back, “in case we die.” She felt his thumb graze across her cheek again. “Well, in case we die, I love you, too, Clarke. But only in case we die,” he added, almost nonchalantly.

 

She kissed him hard this time, and swore she could feel the flames bearing down upon them.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your life.

_* * *_

 

Clarke clung to Bellamy throughout the night, laying her head against his chest. Her fingers dug too hard into his arms as the dead body of the grounder in the basement lay no more than fifteen feet away from their feet, his corpse their only company in the stillness. They were huddled in a corner against the wall and out of sight in case any more of them came down. Clarke and Bellamy spent the first hour or two in fear of hearing another pair of footsteps coming down the ladder, but it remained ever silent, the crackle of the fires outside the only sound to fill the night skies beyond their hiding place.

 

Bellamy’s fingers were too tight on her arms as well, but Clarke said nothing for the rest of the night. She wouldn’t even open her lips to ask Bellamy to loosen his grip. She was too afraid it had been their talking that had brought the grounder down upon them, and so her fear and her cautiousness prevented her from repeating the same mistake twice.

 

By the time the sky beyond the grates had broken into a soft lighter blue and the fires were all but smoking piles of cinder, Clarke realized her hands were aching from clutching too tight for hours on end. Neither of them had managed to go to back to sleep again after what had happened, so they had been up for the rest of the night. Clarke let go of Bellamy, long enough to flex the muscles of her fingers, and he shifted his head in her direction. She went back to holding onto Bellamy afterwards, craning her neck upward to get a good look beyond the grates, but they were too low for her to see much of anything.

 

“I can pick you up,” Bellamy said quietly, and Clarke turned her head to look at him. She then nodded her head silently, her lips pressed close together.

 

It took a moment for him to get her on his back without hurting her. Clarke was hung behind Bellamy like he was about to give her a pony ride, his arms hooked just under her knees and her arms around his shoulders. She raised her head to get a better look than before, seeing the grounders being roused with ease from their sleep. Almost in unison, many of them began to rise.

 

She noticed their route away from the camp turned away from last night’s path. They weren’t moving in a straight line. Elated, Clarke watched them all march away, seemingly unaware of their missing comrade. Maybe he wasn’t anyone of importance, and no one noticed his disappearance. Then again, Clarke wouldn’t have made any bets on it.

 

Furrowing her brow, she glanced around. When one of the grounders mounted a horse and rode off, hoof beats kicking up dirt through the grates and down into her face, Clarke immediately shut her eyes and tried not to cough as she turned her face downward into Bellamy’s shoulder. When the dust settled, she lifted her head again. The grounders were gone, the pound of their march a fading echo in the trees. A bird flew overhead, whistling, and Clarke’s eyes darted to follow it.

 

“They’re gone,” she whispered, her voice sounding hoarse. “Maybe we should wait, though. I don’t want to cross paths with them again, Bellamy.”

 

“Are they heading towards our camp?”

 

His voice was on edge. Clarke could feel it, but she could also hear it. There was a strain in Bellamy’s voice that wasn’t normally there, and it worried her. He was usually the one who appeared unshakable, even if he was shaken to the core. She wasn’t born that was kind of mutability.

 

“No,” Clarke answered him.

 

“Which direction are they going?”

 

“Away from our camp,” she said. “Not in a direct line, but they aren’t marching to it. Whoever they are or whatever they’re doing, it’s not an attack on us. Maybe they’re . . . migrating.”

 

It was a suggestion, but she could feel the muscles in Bellamy’s shoulders tighten beneath her arms around his neck. Reassuringly, Clarke squeezed his shoulder.

 

“They’ll be okay,” she told him, trying to keep hope. Clarke could only pray that the grounders didn’t change direction again, curving back towards their camp. It was an idle wish, though. Anything was possible out here.

 

Anything at all.

 

Bellamy drew in a deep breath, releasing it with a heave of his chest. Clarke felt his back slump with the motion, and he asked her, “Okay, what next? How long until you think we can leave without being seen?”

 

The fact that he was asking her opinion over making his own suggestion gave Clarke even more hope. She knew Bellamy was going to try and carry her away from here. She couldn’t walk on her own, and leaning on Bellamy while limping wasn’t going to get them very far.

 

“We should wait at least thirty to forty-five minutes before heading out,” Clarke recommended, finding new vigor in her voice. “We want to put some distance between us and them, but not too much. We don’t want to be seen, but we need to get back to camp as soon as possible. Something is happening, and we have to warn the others.”

 

“Warn them about _what_?” Bellamy asked, and the tone of his voice told her that he thought it was pointless, when they didn’t know what _it_ was. “We might as well just sound the alarm for war and get prepared for the worst.”

 

Clarke was quiet. “There are other options.”

 

“Sure, princess,” Bellamy said, lowering Clarke back to the ground for now until they were ready to leave the haven. She glanced up at him, but his face was black and his straggly hair was nothing but a glowing silhouette against the light from the grates. “There’s always other options . . . ”

 

But the way he said it, there were no other options.

 

They waited until nearly an hour had passed, and Clarke told him it was time, so Bellamy lifted her onto his back again. He instructed her to hold on as tight as she could while he made his way up the ladder.

 

“That’s going to be the hard part,” he said.

 

Clarke held on tight, and they made it up the broken ladder without falling. Out of the basement, they made their way quietly and carefully through the building, looking around every single corner to make sure no one else was waiting for them to emerge. When the cost was clear, they still had to make their way out of the structure and into the clearing, and that was the scary part.

 

With her heart pounding so hard against Bellamy’s back that she was certain he would feel it, Bellamy gently pushed open the front door as Clarke gripped her arms around his neck just a little harder than before. Bellamy didn’t step outside. He peered left around the edge of the door, and then he looked slowly to the right. He then gazed forward, bearing his eyes down upon the trees.

 

“Do you see anything?” he asked her, his voice so low she barely heard it.

 

Clarke squinted as if it might help her to see farther, but she saw nothing on the horizon, no movement in the trees. “If they’re there, I can’t see them,” she said.

 

Bellamy paused. “Should we run?”

 

“ _Can_ you run?”

 

His muscles tightened again. “Now’s not the time to be a smartass, Clarke.”

 

“Every time is the time to be a smartass,” Clarke replied with a small smirk. She was trying to find the humor in it. He couldn’t blame her for that. The smirk fell from her lips, and Clarke dug her one good ankle into Bellamy’s side like he was a pony. She leaned closer to his ear. “Jog,” Clarke whispered, “if you can.”

 

She patted his shoulder twice, and Bellamy hoisted her up higher with his arms beneath her knees before he set off at an even paced jog towards the trees in the same direction they had come from originally. Clarke’s tracking skills had gotten better since her time on Earth and all of those hunting expeditions, so she noticed the broken twigs and small branches and beaten grass they had previously taken. She pointed ahead of him without saying anything, and Bellamy followed her instruction.

 

Bellamy jogged at a steady pace, going for almost thirty minutes when an arrow whizzed past them through the trees. Bellamy tripped on a root, sending both of them flying to the ground. Clarke rolled off of him, struck by the blow, breathing hard. She glanced over at Bellamy just in time to see a ground come down upon him. Bellamy quickly rolled out of the way and jumped to his feet. The grounder turned his attention to Bellamy, ignoring Clarke completely.

 

He swung his sword at Bellamy, and Bellamy jumped back to avoid getting cut into two pieces. The downside to Clarke riding on Bellamy’s back meant Bellamy didn’t have either one of the guns. Clarke wore his large one across her back. She couldn’t get to it right now, and the sound. Clarke knew every grounder in a ten mile radius or further would probably hear it, so she drew out her dagger and rolled onto her stomach.

 

Clarke slashed through the grounder’s boot on the back of his ankle. The cry she heard was not that of a man, though, but a woman. Startled, Bellamy froze and so did Clarke. The woman whirled around, looking for Clarke.

 

Quickly, Clarke slashed at her other ankle. The woman screamed and fell, losing her sword. Clarke didn’t want to take any chances. Even though it was a woman, Clarke rammed her dagger into the woman’s throat beneath the mask she wore. All sound ceased, and all movement of her body stilled. Blood gushed from the wound, and Clarke stared at it.

 

When she dared herself to breathe again, Bellamy was dragging her back to her feet. “We need to get away from here,” he said urgently. “If someone heard that, we need to go.”

 

Clarke didn’t argue with him, and he hoisted her onto his back again. Before she could reconcile what she had done for him, and for herself, Bellamy was running again. He was running faster this time, the breeze catching in Clarke’s hair as he dashed through the trees. It seemed as if time had slowed down, and she lifted her gaze to the sky. It was still morning. A fresh, cool morning. Clarke closed her eyes.

 

Before she knew it, they were back at the camp. The only explanation for it was that Clarke had passed out or fallen asleep because she didn’t remember the rest of the journey. Once they had gotten past the gates, she wasn’t on Bellamy’s back anymore, but in his arms. Monty and Jasper had run up to them. She could hear their voices talking, their blurry faces crowding above her. They were silhouettes with no defining features.

 

The warm sun was blotted out, replaced with cool darkness, and Clarke saw the red color bleeding into her vision. _Blood_ , she thought, feeling Bellamy lower her to a soft cot.

 

“Clarke?” said a faded voice. Not Bellamy’s. _Monty_. “Hey, Clarke, can you hear me?” His voice was gentle and urging, and it reminded her of her mom’s voice when she had fallen and scraped her knee as a girl.

 

“Yeah,” she murmured, her voice a little hoarse. Her neck had the worst crick in it. “Am I back?” she asked. “Are we back home?”

 

“Yeah,” said another voice. This one wasn’t Monty, but Jasper. “Bellamy went to get you some water and medicine. What happened to you guys? You’re covered in blood. Were you _attacked_?”

 

“I don’t see any entry wounds on her clothing,” Monty said, checking her clothes without being inappropriate. His voice was clearer now. He sounded critical, like a doctor in an examination room. “Everything looks fine, but you weren’t walking when you came in, Clarke. Is something wrong with one of your legs or your feet?”

 

“My ankle—” Clarke had started to say, but Bellamy came back into the tent and cut their conversation short.

 

“Alright, you guys, clear away,” he ordered. “I’ve got this. She just needs some air and rest, not medical attention. I think her ankle was dislocated in a fall, but I popped it back into place. She’ll survive.”

 

“Who’s the medical expert _now_.”

 

“Maybe Clarke needs—”

 

“Monty,” Bellamy grated out. “Jasper. _Now_.”

 

There was silence, and then Clarke rolled her head over to the side to watch their blurry shadows retreat from the tent. She wanted to ask them to stay. Jasper and Monty always seemed worried about her, and they always cared what happened to her. Bellamy didn’t have to run them off like that.

 

She bit her lips together. They were dry and cracked. Sometimes, Clarke thought, he got really greedy about time alone with her in ways that looked seemingly innocent to others.

 

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

 

“Didn’t have to do what?” Bellamy asked, and she felt his hand behind her neck. He lifted her head, bringing a water bottle to her mouth for her to drink. Clarke drank, feeling the cool water wash down her throat and spill over the corners of her mouth onto her chin and down her neck. When she pulled away, he removed the bottle and capped it.

 

“That,” Clarke said to him, settling her head back down onto the pillow, feeling exasperated and drained of all energy. Was it her ankle, or was it seeing Bellamy kill someone and killing someone herself? “Running them out of here. They’re only worried about me.” Clarke only just realized the gun was missing from her back, too. When did he remove it?

 

“I’m worried about you, too,” he said, but he said it like he was giving someone orders, not telling her he was worried about her. Clarke closed her eyes, hearing him messing with something.

 

She remembered her confession in the basement of that abandoned building. She remembered Bellamy’s response to it as well. Now that it was all coming back to her and they weren’t dead, Clarke regretted saying the words out loud. Bellamy wasn’t going to lord it over her, she thought, but he also wasn’t going to let it go. Clarke didn’t expect him to hound her, but he wasn’t going to be happy about it.

 

He wasn’t going to be happy about it if they didn’t get back together.

 

Clarke opened her eyes, knowing exactly what Bellamy was thinking about with that tone of voice. He was remembering their words to each other as well, and he was coming to the slow realization that they might not mean anything now that they weren’t lying dead in the bottom of that basement. But that wasn’t true, they did mean something. _Still_ , Clarke thought, _still_ . . .

 

“Bellamy . . . ”

 

He slowly froze whatever he was doing, and Clarke reached out to lay her hand on top of his. She grasped it, squeezing lightly. Bellamy thrummed with a violent energy beneath his skin.

 

“Thank you,” she said, “for saving my life.”

 

Bellamy was silent for a beat. “You saved mine, too.”

 

“Yeah,” she agreed with a small smile. “I did.”

 

Clarke could hear his thoughts beneath the surface. _Where do we stand now? Can I hold you? Can I kiss you? Can I hold on tight and never let go?_ Bellamy was filled to the brim with passion for everything, and it was overwhelming at times. He was a passionate soul. She had seen it, even back when she had hated him. It flowed through his veins like the life-force of his blood, sustaining him. She had walked out of his tent one night when she awoke to find herself alone, seeing him stand beneath the rain with his arms held wide and his face tilted towards the heavens as if he was pulling it all in.

 

It unnerved her even now, but at the same time, it had always thrilled her, too.

 

“What did you tell them?” Clarke suddenly asked him, attempting to steer their conversation back to typical things.

 

Bellamy was caught off guard. “What?”

 

“When we got back,” she enunciated, “what did you say about what happened to us?”

 

“We went on an unsuccessful supplies hunt and ran into two grounders,” he said as if he was reciting something. “We killed them, but you got hurt in a fall.”

 

“ _Hmph_ ,” Clarke said, rolling the back of her head back onto the pillow. “Sounds about right.” She grimaced, pushing herself up onto her elbows. Bellamy’s hand shot out quickly to stop her at the shoulder.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked.

 

Clarke raised her eyebrows. “Sitting up.”

 

Bellamy shook his head. “You’re not sitting up,” he said. “You’re lying down. You need to heal as fast as possible.” He pushed himself up onto his feet. “You stay here and rest, and I’ll make sure everything is okay with the camp—”

 

“I’m not some _little_ girl you can—”

 

“Clarke,” Bellamy ground out. “Please.”

 

It wasn’t like Bellamy to say please. In fact, Clarke couldn’t remember him ever saying it at all. She stared at him, rendered speechless, until he finally broke eye contact with her and strode out of tent, the flap falling behind him and leaving her in near darkness. The only light was the faint glow of the sun behind the red and white fabric walls that surrounded her. Sinking back down to the makeshift cot, Clarke had to wonder how she kept winding up here.

 

In Bellamy Blake’s bed, of all places.

 

She sighed deeply, mostly exasperated more than she was tired this time. It felt like whatever had made her feel tired earlier was gone. Clarke guessed that she had just passed out on the way back to the camp, and getting some water in her system hinted at dehydration. She did have a dull headache thrumming in the very back of her head. _Yes_ , Clarke thought, _dehydration_.

 

Opening her eyes, she glanced over at her side in hopes that maybe Bellamy left the water bottle in the tent. He did. She scooped it up and uncapped it, drinking all of what was left. The water was still cool, and it tasted wonderful. They stored it underground in a tunnel they had dug for preserving food and cooling water. The idea had been one of Monty’s ideas, Clarke remembered, as she finished off the bottle.

 

When she collapsed back to the bed with her belly full of water, Clarke began to wonder what she was going to do about Bellamy. She ought to be worrying more about the grounders and their home and a possible attack, but Clarke knew she couldn’t fight even if they came. _We’d have to run_ , she realized, even though she knew Bellamy would never go for it. None of them could fight, not really. They could fire guns because Bellamy had trained them, but when the bullets ran out and the swords came out, they would all be cut down and sliced to ribbons.

 

Then again, maybe Bellamy would agree to leaving if he knew she couldn’t fight.

 

Clarke let her thoughts run until her eyelids fluttered to a close, the weight of no sleep from the night before finally catching up with her. She wondered, though it was briefly, if it had caught up with Bellamy, too. Clarke rolled her head over to the side, unable to fully roll her body over with her ankle still in pain. She might have minded all of the clothes if she wasn’t so tired, but it barely registered in her mind.

 

It was still daylight outside of the tent, but Clarke thought she heard crickets as the darkness descended behind her eyelids. Another body stumbled into the tent, no one to be worried of, and made its way over to the bed. She thought she heard the sound of boots being kicked off, and then she felt the weight of someone on the bed beside her. No arm came around her middle, but a head was laid beside hers on the pillow. She felt the shift, and then the soft breath against her cheek. It fell just next to her ear, sending a shiver down her spine and along her scalp.

 

Instinctively, she moved closer to the new body beside her. He emanated a chill instead of warmth, but it was pleasant to feel the cold again. It seemed as though he was chilled from dipping himself into a vat of cold water. Clarke didn’t mean anything by it except to find comfort because she was dead tired, but she reached out for him, placing an arm around his waist and snuggling close. There was no scent of soap on him, just the normal scent of his skin that she knew so well.

 

“All the time,” she murmured, half-asleep and not quite there, but getting close.

 

“ . . . What?” came his confused voice in response, and Clarke just nuzzled into the crook of his neck.

 

“You . . . ” Clarke murmured, pulling herself closer to him. “All the time . . . ”

 

If he had asked anything else, she didn’t hear it. By then, Clarke had finally lost consciousness and slipped into a dark sea of dreams.

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You said, “I know love. It’s all push and shove.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry the update for this took so long! In between the break for the two seasons, I kinda lost my muse for it, but now that the show is back, it's been slowly coming back to me. (Yet I must admit that Bellarke hug got some inspiration and feels going.)

_* * *_

 

Clarke woke up to the tang of metal in her mouth, the distinct taste of iron upon her tongue. She wasn’t sure where it came from, but it stirred her further awake. She felt the hand against her side, the warmth of it seeping through her shirt. She rolled into the body behind her, and the warmth touched her from chest to legs. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she remembered she had been sleeping for days. Ever since they had returned from their trek beyond the encampment, she was confined to the bed to heal. Her ankle slowly began to feel better each day. Eventually, the pain was barely there. As long as she kept off of it and stayed flat on her back, it was fine.

 

She had gotten up yesterday long enough to wash her face in a bowl of water. It was probably for drinking, or maybe it was for her hands. Clarke didn’t care. She used it for her face, which she felt needed it the most. When the dirt and grime fell away and floated to the bottom of the bowl, she felt like she had shed a layer of her skin. The water that cleansed her face seemed to also cleanse the fog from her mind, and she felt better. She had to go back and lie down again, though. Her ankle was in no condition for her to keep standing.

 

Peeking through her lashes, Clarke only saw the silhouette of the sleeping form beside her, but she knew immediately it was Bellamy. She would recognize that mop of black hair anywhere, Clarke thought with a quirk of her lip.

 

Then, came the inevitable sigh. He probably had been watching over her for days during all of the moments when he could get a break from his duties. She wished he would focus on himself more than her, but it was clear by his presence here in the same bed as her that he had been worried about her and wanted to stay close to keep an eye on her. Clarke would complain about the fact that he could get his own bed and leave this one to her, only his warmth was better than a cold bed by herself, so she shut her eyes and sighed again, wrapping an arm about Bellamy’s waist in order to snuggle closer to him.

 

The heat that emanated off of his body was better than the pride of telling him to go away.

 

Bellamy stirred at the movement of her arm around his waist, though, because he was a light sleeper just like her. They had to be to survive out here.

 

Clarke wanted the first word in edgewise, though, so she spoke before he could get a chance. “What are _you_ doing in _my_ bed?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at Bellamy. Never mind the fact that she had her arm around his waist, which kind of made the whole question sort of silly. Still, she kept her game face on.

 

Bellamy lifted his eyebrows right back at her. “Sleeping,” he answered flatly. He glanced down between their bodies. “And I’m not the one with my arm around your waist, princess.”

 

“I’m cold,” Clarke defended herself.

 

“You’re always cold,” Bellamy shot back. “ _Ice_ princess.”

 

Clarke felt her face flush with heat as a small surge of anger shot right through her. “You take that _back_ or—”

 

“—Or what?” Bellamy challenged her in a low voice, raising his eyebrows again. “What are you gonna do?” He looked down between them again before raising his eyes back to her face. “That ankle of yours healed yet?”

 

Clarke yanked her arm back to herself and pummeled his chest with it, not out of anger, but simply because she was irritated with him and he deserved it. Bellamy laughed, leaning away from her weakened fist. She wasn’t that hard of a puncher right now as she usually was.

 

“You call that a hit?” Bellamy teased her, and Clarke went right for his gut.

 

All of the air _oofed_ out of him, and Bellamy curled in on himself. The blow of her fist to his stomach was a bit more powerful than all of the rest. Immediately, she felt bad. She was just teasing. She didn’t mean to go that far. Clarke reached out for him, touching his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said in a rush. “I didn’t mean to—to hit you _that_ hard—are you all right, Bellamy?”

 

Bellamy took a deep breath, and then he slowly exhaled it through his mouth. “I think that’s the first real sign of sympathy I’ve heard from you in regards to me for a while now, Clarke.”

 

Clarke let out a deep breath herself, feeling sheepish. “Well,” she said, “it doesn’t seem like we get much time for that down here, does it?”

 

Her defenses were down. She had been sleeping for days. She wasn’t likely to be closed off with him right now. She was hurt, and she was vulnerable. Most of all, Clarke just wanted somebody to share it with and Bellamy already understood it all because it had been his tent she went to at night, his bed she huddled into, his side she curled up to, and his ear she spoke into.

 

Bellamy cleared his throat and stretched back out again, not commenting on her softer behavior. Instead, he just acted as if nothing had changed at all. “Yeah,” he said, sounding a little rough. “Yeah, we don’t.”

 

When Bellamy glanced up at her face again, Clarke’s gaze found his eyes. They stared at each other for a while in complete silence, just basking in the warmth. It felt like it was a million days ago when they shared those impossible truths at the bottom of basement beneath a grounder encampment, but Clarke remembered everything she had said and everything he had said and there was no taking it all back now.

 

They could, of course, pretend nothing had happened, but somehow she thought that wasn’t possible. You didn’t just tell someone you loved them and then walk away from it as if it was nothing. Fire came out of it—or ashes at the back of your mouth from the memory. One or the other, but they couldn’t just pretend as if it was nothing unless they wanted to taste the ash on the back of their tongues, and Clarke had tasted enough of death already.

 

For once, she wanted to taste life again.

 

She cupped his cheek and pulled in close, pressing her lips to his in a kiss. It was quick and sudden, and a little bit rushed, but Bellamy didn’t seem to mind. He parted his lips and kissed her right back, caressed his thumb over her cheek and rolled her over onto her back against the makeshift bed.

 

“Ow,” Clarke said against his mouth, her ankle catching in the blanket. It was a twinge, nothing more, but Bellamy pulled back immediately as if he had severely hurt her. There was a wounded look in his eyes—and fear—as he looked over his shoulder down the bed where her leg was hidden beneath the covers from sight.

 

“Did I hurt you?” he asked straight away. “Maybe this is a bad ide—”

 

Clarke grabbed his face with both hands, turning him back to her. She gave him a stern look with wide eyes. “Just shut up and kiss me, Bellamy. You aren’t getting a second chance if you back out now.”

 

Bellamy’s face softened—something it didn’t often do at all, and it sort of made him look like a puppy—before he dived right back into kissing her again. He was careful to shift his weight so that he wasn’t anywhere near her ankle, settling for a position of straddling her when she was normally the one who used to straddle him. Clarke liked this, though. It meant he just wanted to kiss her.

 

It meant he didn’t need anything else.

 

Their kisses were rushed at first, both of them holding each other’s face as their lips moved in quick succession like the race of their heart beats. His mouth was hot, and his tongue felt like heaven against her own when he swept it into her mouth. Clarke moaned softly, arching her back, and Bellamy slowed his kiss into a softer, more tantalizing pace. His hand trailed down her neck, fingertips softly brushing against the bare skin down to her collarbone.

 

Clarke breathed deeply when his lips broke from hers, and Bellamy looked down at her from above. There was genuine longing in his eyes, but more importantly than that, there was concern and something deeper and more profound and a bit terrifying to see reflected back at her.

 

Clarke had loved her mother. She had loved her father. She had loved her friends as well, and maybe for a time she thought she had loved Finn, too, but now she wasn’t quite sure if that was what it even was anymore. The way she felt for Finn and the way she felt for Bellamy were two very different things. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to Finn, and she worried about him, but Bellamy . . .

 

. . . if Bellamy died . . .

 

His face twisted above her in a mixed look of concern and confusion. He touched her face, and Clarke turned away slightly, just barely closing her eyes. She felt a tear as it fell out of the corner of her eye and slid down onto her cheek. Bellamy’s thumb caught it, and he brushed it away.

 

“Clarke,” he whispered softly, “are you all right?”

 

Clarke swallowed, shutting her eyes all the way, and nodded her head. “Yes, it’s nothing,” she told him, but Bellamy didn’t buy into it.

 

“Now, I may not know much,” Bellamy began, his tone gentle but also slightly teasing, “but I know that tears aren’t nothing.”

 

Clarke opened her eyes and looked back up at him, smiling softly. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m just . . . rattled. From the last few days. From everything. I’m tired.” She paused, staring at a spot past his shoulder. “It makes me emotional.”

 

Bellamy caressed her cheek one last time, and then he shifted off of her and onto the bed beside her, putting his arm around her waist and snuggling up close to Clarke. “Well, in that case,” he said, sounding more upbeat all of a sudden, “why don’t you go back to sleep, and I’ll just stay right here and keep you warm?”

 

Clarke wasn’t going to get emotional again.

 

She _wasn’t_.

 

She bit her lips together and held back the sudden burn of tears until she blinked them all away, and then she took a slow and steady breath, praying that Bellamy didn’t notice it. If he did, he didn’t say anything about it, and he granted her this one favor of silence.

 

“That sounds good,” Clarke managed to say, finding her voice raw.

 

“Good,” Bellamy said, and that was the end of that.

 

Bellamy didn’t say anything else, but he remained beside her, his arm wrapped securely around her middle and his breathing slowing out to a steady pace. He wasn’t asleep yet, she knew, but Clarke didn’t want to wait until he was asleep to find a more comfortable position. She rolled beneath his arm, careful to not twist her ankle in the process, until she was facing him. Clarke slipped her arm around his waist as well, and she leaned her forehead against his chest because he was especially warm there and because she could hear his heartbeat as she fell asleep.

 

Bellamy didn’t say anything, but he settled his chin against her hair, and she felt him breathe out against it in contentment.

 

 _This is home_ , Clarke thought, an impossibly warm feeling spreading throughout her veins as she fell asleep in Bellamy’s arms.

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It must be fate; I found a place for us.

_* * *_

 

Clarke stared out at the group of their people working together, packing light for easy travel, and distributing food evenly amongst everyone for the journey. She watched as Bellamy oversaw the passing out of rifles to those who had received enough training to know how to fire them properly. Some of their people learned how to use bows and arrows. Not many, but a few, and Clarke watched as they filled their quivers with homemade arrows and tossed their bags over their arms as they set forth into the crowd.

 

Everyone was preparing to leave, but Clarke wasn’t ready just yet. She knew it was the most sensible thing to do. They had all come together and agreed on it, and by all of them, she meant herself, Bellamy, Octavia, Jasper, and Monty. They took each other’s advice seriously, though they all bickered about other possible routes of action to take. Bellamy wanted to face them head on, a point that Jasper agreed with recklessly, but Monty advocated for leaving along with Octavia. The shore would be safer for them. Lincoln had given them coordinates through the forest to the grounders near the coastline. They were peaceful people compared to the ones who sought to kill them now, but Octavia couldn’t seem to convince her brother of that.

 

They were evenly split down the middle, divided two against two. Bellamy and Jasper against Octavia and Monty. Clarke’s voice overturned the scales, tipping them away from the option of war towards seeking shelter with the grounders on the coast. _It’s a better chance of survival_ , Clarke had reasoned against Bellamy’s darkening expression. He hadn’t been happy about it, but she wasn’t giving him much of choice. Jasper had swore, but Octavia looked proud of her. Monty’s face showed his relief as well as his support.

 

They were just children, but they were leading their own group of people, trying to survive against the forces of nature and war. Both were on their doorstep now, dwindling their numbers day by day. If they stayed here any longer, they would all be dead.

 

Despite his dislike of her decision, Bellamy came around to it. He was overseeing their entire camp, walking to and fro to make sure people were ready. Clarke felt her eyes grow heavy, and she leaned against the side of the dropship, letting her head fall against it. She closed her eyes for just a moment. She hadn’t been long on her feet until they got the warning. It came in the form of a one of their own, strung up in the trees outside of their camp. Throat slit, shirt bloodstained red, hands tied behind his back. He was just a boy, no older than fourteen. The blood was on all of their hands.

 

“Lost in thought, princess?” came Bellamy’s familiar voice as he leaned against the dropship beside her. She felt his arm brush against hers, and turned her head towards him, opening her eyes.

 

His face was dirty. He hadn’t washed it in a few days, she reckoned. His hair was also a tousled mess, ashy from the dirt in it as well. He looked more carefree than she felt, though she knew this decision had possibly been harder for him than it had been for her.

 

Clarke turned away from him and sighed. “Lost in general,” she answered flatly. “How’s that for an answer?”

 

“A very vague one,” Bellamy shot back with a bite of his usual humor. “But we’d better get moving soon, Clarke. We don’t have much time. We’ve already packed our bags. It’s now or never.”

 

Clarke pushed herself off of the dropship with a grunt. “Well,” she replied, “let’s make it now.” Her eyes cut towards the wall in the direction of the buried bodies of their friends just outside their camp. Graves with wooden markers and rocks. Amongst them was her friend. _Wells_ , she thought with a sharp lump in her throat as his name stirred up a memory in her head of his smile.

 

He was gone, though.

 

“Never’s not an option,” Clarke finally added, readjusting her own bag onto her shoulder. “Let’s get moving, Bellamy.”

 

“All right, you heard her!” Bellamy shouted out to the crowd. “Let’s get a move on, everyone! We head for the coast! Follow Jasper, Miller, and Raven out of the camp and keep an eye out for grounders!”

 

After the crowd has paused briefly to listen to him, they began to pour out of the camp in the footsteps of their three leads. Jasper, Miller, and Raven were already positioned at the entrance to the camp. The area had been scouted. So far it was safe, so they left everything else behind and carried only what they could carry. Clarke didn’t want to leave so many tents and supplies behind, but not everyone could carry one of everything. Some were just kids, too small to haul a large load. They each had a rolled blanket attached to their bags, but half of the tents had to be sacrificed. They carried as much food and water as possible. As for clothes, they only had what was on their back.

 

“The coast is farther south,” Bellamy said all of a sudden, breaking Clarke from her reverie. “It should be warmer there, too, if we’re lucky. Maybe we won’t die from hypothermia.”

 

“Maybe,” Clarke agreed, walking slightly ahead of him.

 

“Maybe the grounders there won’t kill us as soon as they see us, too,” Bellamy added wryly.

 

Clarke lifted her eyebrows. “Lincoln sent a messenger,” she said. “As long as he got there without getting killed, we should be fine.”

 

“You sure trust him a lot.”

 

Clarke stopped, turning around to face him. “Octavia trusts him, and I trust her,” she said firmly. Clarke narrowed her eyes as she tilted her head to the right. “Or do you not trust your own sister?”

 

Bellamy’s lips drew tightly together. “I trust my sister,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t make stupid decisions from time to time.”

 

Clarke simply raised her eyebrows again. “Must run in the family,” she smarted back, turning on her heels and continuing to walk forward with the crowd.

 

She heard Bellamy sigh behind her, and then hurry to catch up with her again. “I thought we worked things out here,” Bellamy said, sounding a little agitated. He gestured between the two of them with the hand that wasn’t carrying a loaded rifle. “Because this doesn’t seem like ‘worked out.’”

 

She sighed. “We’re fine, Bellamy. I’m just . . . ”

 

“ . . . Tired?” he ventured to ask.

 

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I’m just tired.”

 

Bellamy was silent for a while, walking beside her. It was so quiet around them she could hear the twigs snapping beneath their boots, the dead leaves crunching under their weight. “You know, we started this thing with you being tired.”

 

Clarke smiled at the memory. It was hard to stop herself. “We did,” she agreed.

 

“You know,” Bellamy added, his voice growing a little quieter. “Whenever we get to where we’re going, if they don’t kill us, you’re taking a mini-vacation.”

 

Clarke snorted in disbelief. “We’re fighting for our lives here, and you want me to take a mini-vacation?” She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, a small smirk on her face.

 

“Yeah,” Bellamy said more firmly. “You need it.”

 

“Hmm,” Clarke hummed to herself. “If they don’t kill us?”

 

“Yeah, if they don’t kill us.”

 

She recalled their confessions to each other at the bottom of the dark basement, a grounder troop above their heads and campfires dwindling low in the morning light. _Well, in case we die, I love you, too, Clarke_. _But only in case we die_.

 

“Fine,” she said gently. “If they don’t kill us, I’ll take a vacation.”

 

Bellamy grunted low in his chest. _Good_ , it sounded like.

 

“Oh, and Bellamy?” She looked over her shoulder at him.

 

“Hmm?” came his response.

 

Clarke reached out for his hand, catching it and threading their fingers together as they walked side by side through the forest. She didn’t care if anyone saw it. Clarke doubted at this moment that the group cared about anything that wasn’t survival; they couldn’t be bothered with the idea of gossip or Bellamy and Clarke holding hands as they marched towards something that made Clarke’s heart beat faster in anticipation and trepidation.

 

She was scared, but she wasn’t sure of what. The grounder army, the possibility of being killed by their would-be saviors on the coastline, or what was waiting for her and Bellamy at the end of their march. In the company of another group of people—grounders, especially, who were led by adults and not teenagers—Clarke wasn’t so sure their system of leadership would hold up anymore. They might lose that along the way, and it seemed to be a part of their purpose down here.

 

“Promise me you won’t stop being a pain in my ass,” Clarke told him, feeling a little emotional. Despite the humor in her choice of her words, her voice failed to deliver it as a joke. It came out serious. _Promise me_ , it said, _you won’t leave my side_.

 

Bellamy kept walking beside her, quiet at first. Then, his hand tightened slightly around hers, gripping her fingers with a firm but assuring hold.

 

“You got it, princess.”

 

 


End file.
